The town of Susch does not figure prominently on the international art circuit - yet. But when art aficionados discover Muzeum Susch, this absolute jewel of an institution founded in 2019 by entrepreneur and long time supporter of contemporary art Grazyna Kulczyk, they will flock in droves to this part of the Engadine region in Switzerland.
The private museum, which occupies the site of a medieval monastery and a former brewery along the river Inn, focuses on promoting “the work of international avant-garde women artists who have been overlooked or misread and have thus not be equally aligned and lauded with their male counterparts across art institutions all over the world.”
“Tapta: Flexible forms” is the first large scale retrospective dedicated to the Polish-Belgian artist Tapta outside of her adopted country where she established herself in 1945 and lived there almost continuously until her death in 1997.
For someone unfamiliar with Tapta’s work, the exhibition, curated by Liesbeth Decan, is a complete shock triggered by the encounter between Muzeum Susch’s exhibition spaces and the work of this phenomenal woman and artist. Installed chronologically, the exhibition is divided into two radically different periods: the textile works made in the 1960’s to the 1980’s, and the works in neoprene, made in the 1980’s until Tapta’s death.
Tapta, whose real name was Maria Wierusz-Kowalska, had taken part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and she was not to follow the traditional path of textile artists. In particular, she used ropes which she twisted and knotted. Her work was three dimensional and interacted with the space and the viewers. “What’s my dream?” she asked. “To feel enveloped not only by these textile forms, but also by their extensions: large shadows on the walls. That’s when real and imaginary, past and future merge and you feel reconciled with everything.”
One of the best examples of this idea is the huge and magnificent piece called “Forms for a flexible space” (1974). Made with wool, cotton, metal rings, visitors can enter and even take a seat in. The installation consists of 48 elements of different sizes and shapes: the ceiling consists of baskets made of thick cords sewn in spirals to metal rings which are attached to the ceiling. At the edges of the soft ceiling, long cords looking like lianas emerge from the baskets to form the walls of the flexible room. “With this installation, Tapta refers to the earliest use of textile materials by humankind.” The piece shown in Muzeum Susch is a copy made last year as the original version is in poor condition and could not travel. This idea of the viewer being part of the artwork could have originated from her childhood. “My older sister told me that once, as a little girl,” she remembered, “I arranged all my toys in a beautiful circle and started to dance between them and sing ‘I am Tapta, Tapta, Tapta’. My family liked it and I became Tapta. Forever.” The artist would be looking for forms and shapes that would invite viewers to move around them, to interact with them, to even enter them and be enveloped by their shadow.
In the late 1980’s, Tapta radically changed direction. Instead of using fibers, she switched to an industrial material, black neoprene. This manufactured material allowed her to expand on her idea of flexible sculptures. Sometimes, the elements of a sculpture are connected by hinges, allowing their shape to be changed.
The exhibition is also an opportunity to explore the magnificent space, vast and quiet, and in particular the natural mountain rock grotto, historically used for beer cooling and storage. “I am often asked why I chose a location so secluded from centers when we could have built the same structure in a big city,” explains Grazyna Kulczyk, the founder of Muzeum Susch. “For me, there is a trend towards slow art, that is, visiting locations that lack crowds, where one can calmly receive art and at the same time meet with nature.” This is precisely the experience one has when coming to see Tapta’s profoundly moving exhibition in this deeply affecting site.
-Jean-Sébastien Stehli.
Tapta, Flexible Forms. Muzeum Susch. Until Nov. 3. muzeumsusch.ch
