Maria Taniguchi: Y’a le feu au lac

For her first show in Switzerland, Maria Taniguchi has produced a work consisting of a direct modification of the Kunsthalle’s electric lighting system, embezzling its technical dimension to inscribe it within a communication system. Taniguchi’s interest lies in information and the multiple legacies of western Modernism which she unpacks and turns into sites to be reinvestigated by potential utopian or esoteric ideas, by way of the former’s materiality. The Morse-coded sentence chosen by the artist “Y’a le feu au lac” – literally meaning “There’s fire on the lake” – not only transforms the Kunsthalle by giving it the function of a lighthouse but also produces a gesture that unfolds itself, by appropriating a Swiss saying, so as to create heterogeneous meanings while it equally reflects on the conditions of the relationship between the artist and the location. Indeed, Y’a le feu au lac has been produced in absentia and hence creates a poetics evoking the conditions of its own production.

• Organisation