TWINGI 25
Art in the Twingi Gorge
The historic road through the Twingi Gorge is a cultural monument of national significance. Since 2007, the Twingi has also been a place for art. This summer, the 19th edition of TWINGI (formerly TWINGI LAND ART) once again brings contemporary art to the Binntal. TWINGI 25 opened on June 15 and runs until October 19. Twelve artists or artist collectives have engaged with the unique natural and cultural landscape of the Binntal and present sculptures and installations along the popular hiking trail between Steinmatten and the hamlet of Ze Binne that enter into a dialogue with the landscape.
The exhibition can be visited on an easy one-hour hike between the PostBus stops Steinmatten and Ze Binne (Langthal stop). There are refreshment opportunities at the Ze Binne reservoir and in the village of Binn. The exhibition is open to the public and free of charge. The exhibition guide is available at the tourism offices in Ernen and Binn, as well as at both starting points of the exhibition.
L’heure bleue – Mich Gerber plays the blue hour in the Twingi Gorge
September 19/20, 2025, 19:30
Solo concert on the double bass, only in dry weather.
Information and registration:
The concert will take place on either September 19 or 20, 2025, depending on the weather. Please register so we can inform you about the final date.
TWINGI 25 Exhibition Booklet
The exhibition booklets for the years 2018 to 2024 provide an insight into past exhibitions.
© Matthias Luggen
Collectif aplusse, La Chaux-de-Fonds
Artist Jessie Schaer and stage designer and social clown Max Havlicek founded the collective aplusse in 2024 to realise innovative and socially engaged projects together. In TWINGI 25, they address our great need for control with a wink.
/KA.ME.RA/
The artist duo ‘collectif aplusse’ installs cameras in the Twingi Gorge – silent, discreet and yet familiar presences. Who or what is being filmed here? Is it a threatening natural hazard that is being monitored, or the behaviour of hikers that needs to be controlled? Gathered on a rock face and at the entrance to a tunnel, the cameras seem strangely out of place and useless. They observe each other and ironically question their purpose and our need to monitor everything that is alive.
© Matthias Luggen
Lisa Collomb, Chur
Lisa Collomb was born in Northern Ireland. She lives and works in Chur. In TWINGI 25, she explores the question of how we perceive landscape.
Upside Down, Inside Out
A camera obscura projects an image of the landscape into the interior of the mountain. Light enters the funnel through a hole and onto a screen, where it creates an image that is reversed and upside down. The second window of the tunnel offers a seemingly unaltered view of the same landscape. Seemingly – because our eyes also produce an inverted image on the retina, which is corrected by the brain. The installation encourages reflection on true and false and raises the question of the extent to which images conveyed by the media influence our relationship with the natural world.
© Matthias Luggen
Gaël Epiney, Lausanne
Gael Epiney is fascinated by the mountain world, its natural diversity and the cultural traditions of its inhabitants. His childhood in Valais and his travels to Asia have shaped his artistic work.
Altar
The sculpture ‘Altar’ is a mixture of abstract and colourful forms, whose arrangement is reminiscent of various traditions associated with the design of small religious altars. It is inspired both by folk practices in Valais and by local traditions that Gaël Epiney discovered on his travels to Asia, particularly Tibet. The work is based on a series of drawings that the artist wanted to translate into three-dimensional form. The sculpture highlights his roots and the diverse cultural influences that nourish his creativity.
© Matthias Luggen
Rebekka Friedli & Fancisca Ribeiro, Bern / Lisbon
Following her visit in 2020, Bernese artist Rebekka Friedli is returning to TWINGI for the second time, this time together with Portuguese artist Francisca Ribeiro. The work of both artists is characterised by the fact that it only reveals its full effect in the evening hours.
Cast a Shadow
The phosphorescent properties of minerals inspired this installation. A three-dimensional form was photographed, printed and placed on the rock like a second skin. The result is the illusion of a recess in which scheelite – a rare mineral with luminous properties – lies hidden. Its crystalline structure was traced with pigments that become visible naturally at dusk or when a shadow falls on the surface. In these moments, the installation becomes a poetic reflection of what is present yet hidden.
© Matthias Luggen
Beate Frommelt & Carla Hohmeister, Zurich
Beate Frommelt and Carla Hohmeister explore the significance of mobility for remote mountain villages such as Binn, while also questioning the boundaries between illusion, image and reality.
Tunnel
Over the centuries, the Binntal valley played an important role as a transit region. However, it was not until the road tunnel was completed in 1965 that the village of Binn became accessible all year round. Before that, the access road was often closed for weeks at a time in winter. This textile work is based on a photograph of the tunnel entrance. It creates the illusion of an opening in the landscape, a portal that leads the viewer into another plane of reality. From close up, it is an abstract cloud of pixels, but from a distance, the image comes together to form a deceptively real spatial illusion.
© Matthias Luggen
Marie Lucas, Geneva
The artist Marie Lucas has written a text for TWINGI 25 in which her research on the village of Binn merges with the experiences of researcher Jan Gay from 1930.
Les travailleureuses.x.s d’hommage
The installation, which consists of a fragile scaffolding, a collection of objects and a text, deals with the way we connect with others. During her research on mountain legends and the village of Binn, Marie Lucas discovered that her notes resembled the experiences of German-American researcher Jan Gay, who had hiked through the Upper Valais in 1930. Her installation highlights the continuity and fragility of memory and pays homage to the researcher.
© Matthias Luggen
Lisa Mark, Bern
Lisa Mark is both a sound and visual artist. This summer, she is bringing the Twingi Gorge to life as a soundscape.
Silent Roaming
‘Silent Roaming’ is an acoustic walk through the Twingi Gorge. At various locations in the gorge, sound artist Lisa Mark used special microphones to record sounds that are usually inaudible or easy to overlook. She then processed these sounds into four musical compositions.
© Matthias Luggen
Alexandra Meyer, Basel
With her handmade soap objects, artist Alexandra Meyer brings a surprising and ephemeral material to TWINGI 25.
Savon de la mère
Two white, egg-shaped soap objects* are attached to the rock by thin, shiny metal brackets. They are inspired by the ‘Savons rotatifs’ that used to be found in many public buildings in France. Alexandra Meyer made the soaps in the traditional way, using breast milk and water from the Binntal valley. Both are essential fluids of life that invite reflection on origins, care and life cycles.
© Matthias Luggen
Patrick Perren, Zurich / Lax
Patrick Perren grew up in Lax and has been working as a freelance artist in Zurich for several years. In his work, he critically examines the loss of landscape due to increasing overdevelopment.
Building application BN371-931
Living with a view – surrounded by nature! Who wouldn't want that? If not as a permanent residence, then perhaps as a second home. Switzerland is being continuously covered in concrete at the expense of its natural landscape. It is being densified, renovated, developed and optimised for profit; sometimes even generously planned for the benefit of a few, even outside the building zone. With a fictional building project, Patrick Perren contrasts our need for self-realisation with our collective responsibility and invites us to participate in the discourse on building culture and building mania.
© Matthias Luggen
Anne-Chantal Pitteloud, Sierre
Valais artist Anne-Chantal Pitteloud is fascinated by mountains, geography and geology. The minerals of the Binntal valley were the starting point for her installation at TWINGI 25.
Les capsules
Anne-Chantal Pitteloud loves maps and mountain hiking; her artistic work is strongly inspired by geology. The minerals and crystal hunters of the Binntal valley were also the starting point for this project. With around fifty ‘real fakes’, crystals produced in her studio, she blends fiction and reality. To produce the crystals, Pitteloud used clay and molten glass, to which she added various oxides and powders from minerals collected in the valley. The stone capsules formed from this mixture were fired at 1280 °C.
© Matthias Luggen
Anna Katharina Scheidegger, Brienz / Bern / Paris
The flora of the Binntal valley inspired Anna Katharina Scheidegger in her work for TWINGI 25, in which she addresses topics such as the effects of climate change on biodiversity.
One more summer
The Binntal valley has a particularly diverse flora, thanks in part to its varied topography and different types of rock. Current climate change is affecting biodiversity. While some plant species are benefiting, others are endangered. Anna Katharina Scheidegger has printed around a hundred photographs of extinct or highly endangered Alpine plants on stones and laid them out in the cavern – like a secret waiting to be discovered and admired one last time.
We didn’t do it! Crew, Zurich / Berlin / Budapest
Péter Bátory, János Brückner, Máté Fillér, Ottó Szabó and Márton Emil Tóth have been working together as an artist group for 15 years and exhibit their work jointly. In TWINGI 25, they explore the connections between nature and human civilisation, nature's capacity for regeneration and the transience of human presence.
Mudhead
What remains of humanity when nature takes over? As part of their long-term project MUD, the artist group ‘We didn't do it! Crew’ creates heads out of clay and earth. These are placed in the landscape, where they will change over time and eventually disintegrate. Rain and sun will shape their surfaces, and plants will grow over them or even sprout from them. The sculptures tell of constant change, transience and the quiet power of nature – a living dialogue between humans and the environment.