The Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle (MBAL) has entered into a partnership with the Réseau Hospitalier Neuchâtelois (RHNe) to present an installation focusing on healthcare, in the broadest sense of the term. The aim is twofold: to reinforce the humane aspect of hospital sites, and to enable The MBAL to reach out beyond its walls to a wider audience.
This year’s exhibition, entitled Le souffle d’Amida, features the work of Swiss artist Virginie Rebetez. During several residencies in Cairo, Egypt, where she spent months in the Pyramid Valley on an archaeological dig site, the artist pursued her research on traces, the invisible and absence: themes that are central to her artistic production. Defining herself as an archaeologist, Rebetez experiments with techniques used to preserve traces, such as frottage. In this way, she captures the passage of the breath of life, as it was called in Egyptian culture, and confronts the belief in interconnected lives, before, during and after the passage of time. The text that accompanies the images is inspired by an encounter she had with her spirit in a previous life, Amida, who was already whispering to her about Egypt before she had even been there.
Rebetez takes an unconventional and unexpected approach to themes that are becoming increasingly important in the debate about healthcare : the emotional and mental dimension, and the need to include spirituality, alongside biology, in our understanding of the human being and the quest for psycho-physical well-being. It underlines the importance of recognising bonds, connectivity and empathy, a fundamental concept for survival in our contemporary individualistic society, whose etymology comes from ancient Greek and means to feel with.
The exhibition, with a symbolic and poetic language, evokes those moments when individuals are confronted with dynamics that elude science and medicine, expressions of a vital and human energy that manifests itself in inexplicable ways. The works invite visitors to a moment of meditation, to ‘feel with’ their more spiritual side and, as if the images were magical portals, to look beyond the surface. They are traces of the invisible, of presence in absence, of those gaps in rationality on which we sometimes lean and from which perhaps hope springs.
Exposition dates :
RHNe – La Chaux-de-Fonds
30 october – 15 november 2024
RHNe – Pourtalès
18 november – 2 décember 2024
