RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co)
what do we want to keep?
The exhibition “what do we want to keep? (was wollen wir behalten?)” is the result of many months of work by the artists’ collective RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co) involving the ETH Zurich’s Graphische Sammlung collection of prints and drawings. In their artistic production, Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza and Daniel Hauser, who have already been appearing for more than 20 years under the joint name RELAX, address questions of artistic identity, the character of artistic work and the role of artists in the socioeconomic context.
About the product
The exhibition “what do we want to keep? (was wollen
wir behalten?)” is the result of many months of work
by the artists’ collective RELAX (chiarenza & hauser &
co) involving the ETH Zurich’s Graphische Sammlung
collection of prints and drawings. In their artistic production, Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza and Daniel Hauser, who have already been appearing for more than 20
years under the joint name RELAX, address questions of
artistic identity, the character of artistic work and the role
of artists in the socioeconomic context. The Graphische
Sammlung ETH Zurich, which was founded in 1867
as a collection for study and teaching, now comprises
around 160,000 works on paper, ranging from the old
masters to contemporary art.
For the project “what do
we want to keep?,” Chiarenza and Hauser chose works
from the collection with a focus on representations of
women carrying out paid work, as well as depictions
of female artists. Here they addressed questions con-
cerning the collection and preservation of artworks, as
well as canonizing processes and their influence on the
economic value of art. Their work on the collection in-
spired Chiarenza and Hauser in the production of their
own works, which are presented in the exhibition and in
this catalog.
