UNSERE ZEIT (OUR TIME)

SOLO Exhibition
Wasserkirche Zurich
3. - 20. October 2024

Curated by: Bassma El-Adisey
Project done in collaboration with the elderly center Bürgerasyl-Pfrundhaus.

Alicia Velázquez, Unsere Zeit, 2023/2024
Installation of 13 sculptures
Fired clay, acrylic, dimensions variable

If we were landscapes, what would we be?
Between February and June 2023 I conducted interviews with 13 residents of the Bürgerasyl-Pfrundhaus elderly home in Zurich. In these encounters, I learned about their personal highs and lows, flowing and fading dreams, new corners and similar edges. Afterwards, I noted down impressions and, while repeatedly listening to the recordings of the conversations, translated the collected memories of our time together into clay. To which later, after firing, I added colored brushstrokes in acrylic.

Inspired by the spontaneous meeting of 87 year-old Adelhaid, with whom I carried a sweet connection for about a year, Our Time invites to an exchange between generations. In a society that likes to relegate aging to the margins of coexistence, there are few places for images of people that remind us of the limitations of our time. These 13 abstract portraits ignore superficialities and conveniences and instead show living imprints of time that resonate in the here and now.

Project supported with the Covid-19 work grant 2022 by Stadt Zürich Kultur.
Exhibition supported by the Cassinelli-Vogel Foundation and the Wasserkirche Zürich.

Special thanks go to the former director of the Bürgerasyl-Pfrundhaus Beat Füglistaller and the 13 portrayed residents Peter Beeck, Hans Otto Detmer, Marlis Fahrländer, Kurt Grüter-Cordioli, Verena Häberling, Beatrice Honegger, Karl Jost, Katharina Krebs, Elizabeth Lieser, Adelinde Pfender, Pia Schönenberger, Alexandra Szigeti and Walter Thoma.

Photos: © Zoe Tempest