Susan Tonkin Riegel, Visual Artist from USA

Within the past four or five years Susan Riegel's work
has progressed from mostly two dimensional mixed
media on paper into a series of semi- three dimensional
wood collage pieces. The past two years I have used old
ironing boards as ground surfaces as well as cigar boxes.

The work is a combination of various parts of my everyday
life, which includes family, pets, nature, travel, inner
consciousness, dreams, and spiritual beliefs. It is
fabricated in a spontaneous way, with a willingness
and openness to accept accidents that present
themselves along the way. Some of the materials used
include wood, cloth, paint, string, ribbon, dryer lint, wire,
game parts, newspaper, handmade paper and an
assortment of recycled objects.

> to Susan Riegels Website:
http://www.riegelart.com

> Flyer to her exhibition in the Villa Sträuil (PDF)

Scott Conarroe, Photographer from Canada

Scott Conarroe makes photographs of landscape and
infrastructure and ambiance. He likes paradoxical topics
and poetic types of tension. He discerns cultural ideals
and identities from the built environment.

> to Scott Conarroes Website:
http://www.scottconarroe.com/

Eunsun Lee, Composer from Corea/Germany

The Korean composer Eunsun Lee studied in the
Meisterklasse under Professor Wilfried Krätzschmar at the
"Hochschule für Musik" in Dresden. It was there that she
composed her first opera" Vorfall in Kwangju" - Incident in
Kwangju, which was premièred to great acclaim at the
Semper Opera Dresden's theatre "Kleine Szene". Further
studies followed under Professor Wolfgang Rihm in
Karlsruhe Music-theatre plays a central role in her creative
output with projects in Frankfurt, Berlin and Ouagadougou
planned for the coming year. She has received various
prizes, including 2nd Prize at the International Composition
Competition of the Dresden Chamber Choir and has
already made a name for herself with numerous
performances in Germany, Korea and internationally.

Wolfgang Semmelrock, Visual Artist from Austria

Helena Nicolao, choreographer, dancer, and bodywork
therapist from Germany

During her month stay at the Villa Sträuli, Helena Nicolao
will focus on her research project “Somatic Learning and
Site-Specific Performance.” She will concentrate on
investigating sensitive perception and its implementation
in dance, movement, voice, and sound. As part of her
project she will invite additional choreographers,
musicians, and dancers to the Villa for one week each.
They will experiment with her, using the Villa Sträuli house
and garden as performance site. Those invited are: Maria
Carreras, Mette Bruhn, Sabine Heusser-Engel, and Isabel
Jones.

> to the profile of Helena Nicolao

Quynh Vantu , Visual Artist and architect, from USA

Quynh Vantu received her Master of Architecture from the
Cranbrook Academy of Art and her Bachelor of Architecture
from Virginia Tech in the US. Although trained and licensed
as an architect, Quynh does not discern between
architecture and art. Her work explores our physical
relationship to the built environment and how we interact
with our spatial surroundings. Drawing from her upbringing
in the American “South”, Quynh's work stems from
influences of porch culture and “southern hospitality”,
enacting social virtues and exchanges in the architectural
interventions she creates. She has been awarded a
Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant from the American
Institute of Architects-NY to travel and study contemporary
Swiss architecture and research at the ETH-Zürich.
And she is continuing her studies in the studio here, at
the Villa Sträuli.

Katharina Hohmann, Visual Artist, main focus:
Art in Public Space, from Germany

> Katharina Hohmann's website

Stéphane Lambert, author from Belgium

Born in Brussels in 1974 Stéphane Lambert holds a Master
in Romance languages from the Université Libre de
Bruxelles. Before he turned 30 he has worked as a
publisher of Belgian literature. He currently contributes to
cultural magazines for which he mainly writes actor’s
portraits. He has published different kinds of books in prose
(novels, shorts stories, essays…) and made some
documentary and fictional works for the radio. He received
different institutional Belgian awards and grants. He was a
literature lecturer in Prague Charles University and stayed in
writer’s residence in Rome, Berlin, Vilnius and Paris. He
devotes more and more his writings on art and artists. After
an essay about Monet’s Waterlilies, he is now working on
the last paintings of Rothko. He divides himself between the
necessity to root somewhere and the need for being
somewhere else.

www.stephanelambert.com

Moez Surani, author from Canada

Moez Surani's poetry and short fiction have been widely
published in Canada, as well as in the U.S., Europe and
Asia. He has won a number of awards, including the
Kingston Literary Award, the Dublin Quarterly ’s Poem of the
Year and a Chalmers Arts Fellowship which supported a
research stint to India and East Africa. He is the author of
Reticent Bodies, which is a distinguished debut collection of
poems. He'll be moving to Switzerland in January to begin a
writing residency where he'll focus on a novel.

Anett Frontzek, visual artist from Germany

Anett Frontzek examines urban, architectural, geological,
and sociological structures in her art. Though her
background is sculpture, in recent years she has focused
on drawings, paper cutouts, and installations. All projects
are accompanied by artist books, which are themselves
independent works.

When participating in competitions and Kunst am Bau
(Art in Architecture) projects Anett Frontzek is interested in
developing artistic concepts that are individually designed
in scale and content for a particular location and user.

More information about the artist: www.anettfrontzek.de
Article in the local Newspaper (german)

Kai Syng Tan, visual artist from Singapore

Tan Kai Syng studied visual art from 1994 to 1998 at the
Slade School in London and for twelve years has been
using mainly videos to question historical truth and other
“great stories”. After studying painting and sculpture, she
resorted to more ‘labyrinthine’ approaches to art, even
before in Singapore the fashion was to cast “sculptures
of the very dead in bronze - the deader the better and
bigger” and to have “watercolours of chicken running
around in the age before bird flu, or rather when such
issues as bird flu were ignored”, as she says. She
resolved to gather brief accounts of the past, which do
not dovetail into a single truth and which would
otherwise soon land on “the ash-heap of history”.
This is why she calls herself ‘gurung guni’, Malayan
for ‘rubbish collector’.

www.3rdlifekaidie.com

Anna Bolecka , author from Poland

Anna Bolecka intends to describe in her new
novel an incident that takes place in Zurich. She
wants to soak in the atmosphere of the city,
its buildings and streets, and see the places
where those who had fled from persecution
found refuge.

Veronika Tzekova, Multimedia Artist from Bulgaria

artist, creative strategist, visual culturist, 99% positive.
born in 1973, based in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In 2001 Veronika Tzekova graduated MFA from Dutch Art
Institute (DAI), postgraduate interdisciplinary research in
visual arts and media, Enschede, The Netherlands.

In 2004/2005 she takes part in Bauhaus Kolleg VI,
“Transnational Spaces”, postgraduate program, Dessau,
Germany with grant by relations project of the Federal
Cultural Foundation.

In 2009/2010 Veronika is taking part in the 7th Asia-Europe
Art Camp – Art Workshop for Visual Arts, organized by
Casino Luxembourg on the topic “Moved, mutated and
disturbed identities”, an international post master
programme organized on the occasion of the Luxembourg
Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai (CN).

Veronika Tzekova presented her projects and art works in
solo and group exhibitions in Paris, (France), Ljubljana
(Slovenia), Luxemburg,  Vienna (Austria), Belgrade (Serbia
and Montenegro), Kassel, Dessau, Berlin, Ochtrup
(Germany), Istanbul (Turkey), Enschede, Amsterdam (The
Netherlands), Thessaloniki (Greece), Bratislava (Slovakia),
Denver (USA), Toronto (Canada) and Sofia (Bulgaria).
 
The media used by the artist vary from sculptures, site-
specific installations, photography and digital images and
often various advertisement media and performances.
Lately the artist takes part in some urban and street art
projects.

Issues of identities, public space, advertisement and
cultural icons, symbolic production and urban practices
are some of her main interests as an artist.

Websites:
http://www.veronikatzekova.hit.bg
http://www.youtube.com/VeronikaTzekova

E-mails:
veronika_tzekova@abv.bg
veronikatzekova@yahoo.com
veronique47@hotmail.com

Robert Serban, author from Rumania

Robert Şerban was born on October 4, 1970, in
Turnu Severin (Romania). He lives in Timişoara.
He is a writer and journalist, producer and presenter
of the television programme The Fifth Wheel
(analogue TV, Timişoara), editor of the magazine
Orizont, and director of the Brumar publishing house.

His book of poems Heimkino, bei mir (Home-cinema)
was published in German in 2009 by Pop Verlag.

In 2004 he was decorated for his services to culture
with the rank of knight by the Romanian presidency.

Abdus Salam , visual artist from Bangladesh

With a keen eye Abdus Salam sees things in society,
politics, and ways of living that culminate in the heartless,
vulgar, arousing, fantasized “Bangla cinema.” Our society
has a tendency to forget its authenticity, its cultural heritage,
and for Abdus Salam it is high time to revive rapidly
dwindling meaning, and to nurture and stimulate it
through the language of art. In his Space Prints he
uses footprints, ruins of buildings, walls—things
with history—as his plates. He makes impressions
from these, monoprints, to which he then adds colour.
At times his work is supplemented by audio-visuals
or documentary film material. With his contemporary
testimonials, Abdus Salam seeks to draw people’s
attention to their history, heritage, and their culture.

article in the "Landbote" (in german)

The residency of Abdus Salam
is supported by

Heera Kim , composer from Corea

South Korean composer Heera Kim has been studying
composition and music theory for her soloist degree
(Solistenklasse) with Dr.h.c. Wolfgang Rihm at the
college of music in Karlsruhe since 2007. She has
already won several important international prizes
and composed major solo works for different
instruments, ensemble music, as well as electronic
and orchestral music. Her music often references
colours, shapes, and shadows in nature in a variety
of ways, and via increasingly sophisticated methods
she tries to translate these ideas and concepts into
music.

Dr. Traudl Bünger, author from Germany

Since 2004 writer Traudl Bünger has organised the
programme for the international literature festival
lit.COLOGNE, including inviting authors, moderators,
and actors to the festival. She is also active with the
festival in her role as author, writing literary programmes
that are cast with actors and then staged. In addition,
Traudl Bünger writes literary criticism and radio features,
and in 2007 she published, with Roger Willemsen, Ich
gebe Ihnen mein Ehrenwort. Die Weltgeschichte der
Lüge (I Give You My Word: The Global History of Lies)
(S. Fischer Verlag).

During her stay at the Villa Sträuli she will work on a
prose project that playfully calls into question the
boundaries of fiction and reality, the viability of
perceptions and constructions of reality.

Article from September, 8 (Der Landbote)
Article from November, 16 (Der Landbote)

Anja Knecht, visual artist from Germany

Artist Anja Knecht is primarily concerned with new
media. In her works she poses the question, “what
kind of images are we seeing?” Her request is not
to answer this with deconstruction but to show the
process of media communication. By simultaneously
making visible and veiling, she produces in-between
spaces that the viewer is required to fill.

www.schwarzhandpresse.ch
Invitation "Rubato" frontpage
Invitation "Rubato" 2nd page (text in german)

More informations about Anja Knecht:

Junko Sugimoto, Installation art from Japan/USA

Junko Sugimoto makes use of a wide variety of
common materials such as paper, Cheerios, yearn,
etc. to create dynamic and challenging sculptures
and installations. The inspiration for her work
comes from her frequent travels, where, far away
from home, she finds strenght in the comfort of
familiar objects. Since 2003, she has lived in
seven different places: Osaka, Tokyo, Kanazawa,
New York, Paris, Brooklyn, and Pont-Aven and
Winterthur. Because of her nomadic lifestyle, her
belongings have been reduced to simply what is
necessary and she is forced to reacquire the
common materials of everyday life in each new
location. Thus, objects and materials such as
maxi-pads, towels, and q-tips that rarely inspire
much thought or emotion acquire a profound
significance for her.

More information about the artist:

Käthe Schönle, painter from Germany/Austria

Käthe Schönle completed her art studies with honours
at the Kunsthochschule (School of Art and Design)
Kassel, Germany, in 2006, and was awarded the art
prize of the city of Kassel in 2005. She works principally
in the mediums of painting and drawing. Her attempt to
come to terms with “media excess,” the daily flood of
images, is reflected in her work.

From March 6 to March 28, Käthe Schönle will show
paintings and drawings in the "Kunstraum Winterthur".


Invitation Kunstraum Winterthur (PDF, in German)

More Informations:

Oksana Zabuzhko, Writer from Ukraine

Oksana Zabuzhko, Ukraine's leading contemporary
author, was born in 1960. She graduated from the
department of philosophy of Kyiv Shevchenko
University in 1982, and obtained her Phd in
philosophy of arts in 1987. She has worked as a
Research Associate for the Institute of Philosophy
of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, lectured in
the US on Ukrainian culture and worked as a
columnist for some of the Ukraine's major journals.
After the publication of her novel Field Work in Ukrainian
Sex (1996), later named "the most influential Ukrainian
book for the 15 years of independance", she has been
living as a free-lance author. She is Vice-President of
the Ukrainian PEN. At Villa Sträuli Oksana Zabuzhko
wants to complete the final chapter of her Novel "The
Museum of Abandoned Secrets".

Thanks to Pro Helvetia Oksana Zabuzhko can stay
in the Villa Sträuli.

> More informations

Cristina Ohlmer, visual artist from Germany

For Freiburg-based artist Cristina Ohlmer, the most
important work components in her examination of
the contents of art are major installations and staged
investigations of image, colour, and light, as well as
drawing with nulla dies sine linea and pluies d’encre.

Vita Cristina Ohlmer (in German)
More Informations (PDF, in German):
Text 'Tage in Tianjin'

Russudan Meipariani

The musician Russudan Meipariani was born in Tbilisi,
Georgia in 1975.


More Informations:

Luca Bertolo

Luca Bertolo's artwork is centred on painting and
drawing, considered as sophisticated means for
reflection on representation. He has developed his
research along the lines formed by the intersection
of a cold and intentional conceptual/analytic
approach to pinting with painting itself as the
result of a synthetic, warmer and partially unintential
process. He works also with other media such as
drawing, collage, video and writing.

Cecilia Barriga

Cecilia Barriga was born in Chile in 1957. She lives
and works in Madrid, Spain. She has devided her
residence among Spain, Chile and other countries
since 1977. For the past 20 years, she has worked
in different visual formats: film, video art, documentary
and feature film. As an Artist-in-Residence at Villa Sträuli
she wants to finish her feature film "El viento que
regresa" that she is realizing together with Claudia
Lorenz from Zurich.

> Short profile Cecilia Barriga

> Invitation "Meet the Artist" / september, 19, 2008

Ruth Anderwald & Leonhard Grond

Since 1999 Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond
are working together in Photographie, Installations
and Experimental Film.

> Website Anderwald-Grond

Rainer Düvell from Germany, Architect

Architect and artist Rainer Düvell works at the
interaction of space, sculpture and installation.
He studied art and architecture and is fascinated
with the link between the two. In addition to his
activities as an artist, he oversees the studio
recidency program, LA FABRIK in Berlin, which
he established. The cities of Winterthur, Thun
and St. Gallen have been sending grant recipients
to La Fabrik since 2004.

> Website Rainer Düvell
> Website LA FABRIK
> Flyer exposition "Welten Wechsel"
> Website Kunstraum Winterthur
> Media Information Exhibition "Welten Wechsel"

Rekha Tandon, dancer from India

Dr. Rekha Tandon is the Artistic Director of
Dance Routes. She is an Odissi Performer,
choreographer and researcher.

Her stay in the Villa Sträuli is part of the "60
Years Jubilee Swiss- Indian Friendship Treaty ".

> Website Jubilee
> Short profile Rekha Tandon

Julia Mensch, installation art, Argentina

In her installations, artist Julia Mensch from Buenos
Aires explores individual history, seeing in it a
dimension entirely different from that found in official
historiography. By tracing the history of individuals,
she enables both a re-experiencing and a reinvention.
In addition to her work as an artist, Julia Mensch has
taught art at various school levels.

> Short profile Julia Mensch
> Invitation Open Studio

Nora Ikstena            

Mid-Jan. to end of June 08

Nora Ikstena, literature, Latvia

Hailing from Riga, Nora Ikstena is a versatile author
who has published short stories and novels, written
screenplays, and has worked as a journalist and
associate editor for a number of Latvian publications.
An active member of various national cultural policy
committees, Nora Ikstena documents the cultural and
political development of her country while also serving
as an impetus herself. She is the recipient of several
prizes, and her books have been translated into many
languages.

> Short profile Nora Ikstena

Composer, teacher, and researcher Nahla Mattar is
assistant professor at Helwan University in Cairo. She
received her doctorate in composition in 2005 from
Arizona State University. Her objective is to compose
powerful, expressive music that blends sound with
visual and theatrical rituals in order to explore themes
of cultural pluralism and border crossing. Her main
interest lies in the electro-acoustic-digital interactive
medium. (Quotation, World New Music Festival,
Stuttgart, 2006)

Nahla Mattar was awarded at the International
Competition for Women Composers the 2nd prize
to the composition "Three for violoncello, bass clarinet
and piano". The piece was written by Nahla Mattar
during her residency as an artist-in-residence at the
Villa Sträuli.

> Short profile Nahla Mattar

> Webblog from Nahla Mattar

> Results Composers Competition

Katharina Hohmann

July to December 2007

Maryna Ochab

November 2007

Małgorzata Łukasiewicz

October 2007

Marianne Racine

September/October 2007

Clara Moreau

September 2007

Yoshihiro Hanno

April to September 2007

Agnes Janich

Aug.-Sept./Nov. 2007

Andreas van Dühren

March 2007

Florin Tudor and Mona
Vatamanu

January to June 2007

Boris Pérez

January to June 2007

Teodora Stepančić

January to March 2007

The pre-art soloists play works by Teodora
Stepančić (Pro Helvetia grant recipient), Darija
Andovska, and others. The concert was
accompanied by commentary and followed
by an aperitif.
> Programme (2 pages)

Bettina Carl

July to December 2006

Rafael Grassi

July to December 2006

Maria R. Isliker and
Ulla Rohr

End of November until
beginning December 06

Hana Bezouska

October 2006

Angie Seah

August and September
2006

Hamdy Reda

May to July 2006