Sara Bissen

That's not to say it's a losing game

3D Animation, video, 2', 4'55'', 1'25'', 4'36'', 4', 2024

IN ORDER TO COMMIT TO REDUCING OUR ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION TOGETHER, THE VIDEO WORKS OF THE MIRE PROGRAMME ARE BROADCAST ONLY DURING PEAK HOURS, FROM 7AM TO 9.30AM, FROM 12PM TO 2.30PM AND FROM 5.30PM TO 8PM. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND HAVE A NICE TRIP.

Sara Bissen’s work, comprising five videos displayed between the Chêne-Bourg, Eaux-Vives, Lancy-Bachet and Lancy-Pont-Rouge stations, draws its visual vocabulary from the world of childhood. The Jenga construction game, the seesaw, the birthday cake and the heart-shaped balloon appear against a background of clouds treated using digital technology, with either a smooth or a pixelated texture. Texts by US artist and poet Marianna Maruyama echo Bissen’s images. Together, these two artistic modalities combine to evoke an ideal, simple and reassuring past. But an unsettling feeling hangs over the image, glimpsed through the text and the video’s tremors. It’s as if a tragic event were to overturn the lightness and happiness evoked by the childlike imagery, and materialize through the horizontal lines of dead pixels, opacifying the initially clear object. The image decomposes, the Jenga bursts into pieces and a face appears in the reflection of the pieces. The human presence is only tangible in the video shown at Chêne-Bourg station. The other four only reveal it through movements, such as those of the swing or the candle, or through the construction and destruction of the Jenga towers. But human beings remain the driving force behind the work: they are indeed at the heart of the story. Their physical presence is not directly shown, but only suggested.

Produced by the Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain, Geneva for the Mire program

Autres artistes à Lancy-Bachet

Sara Bissen

Gabriel Massan

Sara Bissen was born in 1990 in Karagandy, Kazakhstan. She studied environmental engineering in Finland before choosing an artistic path, a practice that she refined during her years of study in Vienna and Geneva. After her Master’s degree in Visual Arts CCC at the Haute École d’Art et de Design – HEAD, the artist was awarded a grant “Bourses déliées” in 2023 by the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain. Her work focuses on the history of the Caucasus, which the artist attempts to understand by deconstructing the Russian and Soviet colonial burden that the region has long carried. Inhabited by a strong postcolonial, feminist and queer mindset, Sara Bissen seizes on local Eurasian narratives and injects them with another form of narrative, one that is specific to contemporary art. Bissen explores narrative possibilities mainly through 3D animation, creating a universe imbued with sensitivity, contrasting with the harshness of the subjects evoked.