Aïcha Revellat studied English Literature and Linguistics (BA) and Art History and Image Theory (MA) at the University of Basel. 2017 research assistant at the Aargauer Kunsthaus (Aarau). Since 2014 art educator at the Schaulager (Münchenstein) and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Since 2021 member of the eikones Graduate School.

Fragile Surfaces, Sharp Edges. Form and Orientation in Hannah Villiger's Practice

Hannah Villiger (1951–1997) is best known for her radical and unfiltered representations of her own naked body in large-scale works referred to as sculptural photographs. This dissertation, supervised by Markus Klammer (University of Basel) and Eva Ehninger (Humboldt University of Berlin), presents the first comprehensive scholarly investigation of the Swiss artist’s oeuvre.

The analysis combines phenomenological perspectives with media-historical and other image-theoretical approaches to examine Villiger’s working processes and formal strategies. At its core is her use of the Polaroid camera, which she employed primarily for photographic self-portraits from 1980 onwards. The investigation begins with the artist’s skin, her central motif, which serves as a key to a broader reflection on the surfaces that permeate her work. Vegetal skin, photographic skin, and paper are interpreted as fragile, permeable membranes marked by rupture.

Villiger’s photographic installations, composed of one to twenty individual images, assemble fragmented views of the body. The synthesis of these fragments into new configurations—forms that break away from the classical schema of the body and expand multidirectionally across the picture plane—is interpreted, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, as an expression of alternative modes of perception that challenge the vertical, dominant, Western-patriarchal gaze.

Art historically, Villiger’s practice is situated in dialogue with other forms of self-photography, such as Xerox and photo booth images, which were employed in feminist art practices of the 1970s to 1990s as direct and accessible media. Furthermore, her use of instant photography is compared to early approaches in video and feedback art, where artists explored the immediacy of image correction and manipulation.

Fragility—of material, medium, and temporal processes—emerges as a constitutive element of Villiger’s work. The study’s multi-perspective approach contributes to a critical reassessment of Villiger’s significance within Swiss and international developments in photography and sculpture since the late 1970s.