Guadalupe Ruiz
Qué bueno verte, qué bueno volverte a ver.

The artistic work of Guadalupe Ruiz revolves around exchange, imitation, translation, appropriation, and reproduction. She deliberately works with photographs, replicas, or copies because she is interested in cultural techniques and the intercultural processes connected to them. She photographs, copies, and reproduces with the aim of appropriating and understanding her own world through its depiction. Having grown up in Colombia, she came to Switzerland alone as a teenager. In Lausanne, she first studied Graphic Design and Photography; from 2017 to 2019, she completed a master’s degree in Fine Arts at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW. The permanent relocation of the centre of her life to Switzerland transformed her self-perception in the present and, at the same time, altered her perspective on the world of her childhood and her family. “First, I photograph with my hands,” writes Guadalupe Ruiz about the handcrafted production of the copies, “each piece is handmade and patiently reconstructed.” Reproductions at a scale different from the original are reminiscent of the work of a photographer. Guadalupe Ruiz refers to the replicas also as images and sums up her method with the formula: “Look twice. Look better.”

The exhibition is the 16th  project of a series of exhibitions initiated in 2017 that presents commissions of former students and lecturers of the Institute Art Gender Nature.