Christoph Büchel (born 1966) is a Swiss artist known for provocative contemporary installations. He received international attention for constructing a mosque in a Venice church and suggesting that prototypes for Donald Trump's wall should be considered land art.

Early life and education

Christoph Büchel was born in

Basel, Switzerland Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zurich and Geneva), with ...

, in 1966.York Underwood, 'Life Imitating Art: Iceland’s “Mosque” Installation In Venice', ''The Reykjavík Grapevine'' (6 June 2015), https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2015/06/06/life-imitating-art-icelands-mosque-installation-in-venice/.

Dispute with Mass MoCA

Since early 2007, Büchel has been ensconced in a legal dispute with the

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ...

(commonly known as "Mass MoCA"). The museum had agreed to take on Büchel's massive project, "Training Ground for Democracy," only to balk at certain costs associated with some of the planned installations. The museum, which had already invested significantly in the exhibit, won permission in court to open it to the public without the consent of Büchel, who claims to do so would misrepresent his work. Mass MoCA's Director, Joe Thompson, decided to dismantle it instead without opening it to the public.

Selected works

Interno della chiesa della Misericordia trasformata in moschea

For the 2015

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

, Christoph Büchel contributed Iceland's national pavilion which consisted of a conceptual work of art which transformed the 10th-century old Church of the Abbey of Misericordia into a generic mosque. Labeled '' The Mosque: The First Mosque in the Historic City of Venice'', it was partly inspired by disputes in Iceland over building the first purpose-built

Reykjavík Mosque The Reykjavík Mosque () is a mosque and gathering area for Muslims in Iceland. It is located in the Ármúli district. The mosque was opened in 2002 by the Muslim Association of Iceland after requesting the city government for permission to bui ...

. After a complaint presented by a member of the

neo-fascist Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology which includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, right-wing populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xe ...

party New Force, the Venetian authorities closed the installation, citing permit violations. Büchel encouraged artistic recognition of eight prototypes of the border wall erected near the US-Mexico border. Büchel mobilized support through an online petition. For the 2019 Venice Biennale, Büchel displayed '' Barca Nostra'', a shipwreck that had sunk with hundreds of migrants aboard. His 2024 Venice Biennale installation, called ''Monte di pietà'', set at the

Fondazione Prada Fondazione Prada, co-chaired by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli since 1995, is an institution dedicated to contemporary art and culture. From 1993 to 2010, the Fondazione has organised 24 solo shows at its exhibition spaces in Milan, concei ...

, was fiercely criticized by the historian

Francesca Trivellato Francesca Trivellato (born 1970) is an Italian historian, focusing on cultural, economic and social history in the early modern period. Her publications have covered Italian history, Jewish history and trade and cultural networks. She is currentl ...

for its haphazard juxtapositions of objects mixing Jewish history and critics of capitalism.

References

External links

Christoph Büchel on ArtfactsHauser & Wirth
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buchel, Christoph Swiss installation artists 1966 births Living people Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni Swiss contemporary artists