Jeanne Tara
Jeanne Tara’s practice moves between sculpture, installation, video, writing and research. At its centre is an ongoing question of transmission: what do bodies, objects, spaces and images carry from one generation to another, and what happens when something is interrupted, displaced or left out of the record? Their work brings together different forms of knowledge and experience, moving between materiality and archive, personal memory and collective histories.
This expanded interest in archives and research is a continuation rather than a departure from Tara’s earlier practice. Their long-standing engagement with architecture and the built environment has explored how spaces and structures organise bodies and transmit forms of authority and power. Their installations remain physical and immersive, but the questions that inhabit them increasingly extend beyond the architectural space towards memory, inheritance, diaspora and movement.
The body has become an important point of connection between these different dimensions of their practice. It is not only the body of the viewer experiencing an installation, but also Tara’s own body as a site of learning and transmission. Their work with metal, for instance, involves acquiring and repeating gestures associated with forms of craftsmanship whose knowledge is increasingly disappearing. Learning through the hands becomes a way of entering a history that was not necessarily written down. Knowledge can be transmitted through movement, imitation and repetition as much as through documents.
Mimetism is an important aspect of this process, extending across different forms of Tara’s practice. It appears in the learning of techniques, in the imitation of ornamental and architectural elements, and in the translation of existing forms into other materials—for instance, replicating foundry processes through ceramics or reproducing details from public sculptures through painting. It also emerges through movement and the remembrance of gestures. Imitation becomes less a form of reproduction than a way of entering into relation with an existing form, allowing it to be learned, displaced and transformed through the body.
This understanding of transmission also informs Tara’s growing engagement with archives. Their research moves between institutional and personal sources: maps, museum collections, historical objects, photographs, family documents and oral narratives. They approach the archive not as a fixed repository of facts, but as something porous, incomplete and continuously reshaped through the act of remembering. Family stories shift between generations; memories contradict one another; objects acquire different meanings according to where and by whom they are displayed. What remains absent from an archive can therefore be as significant as what has been preserved.
Their recent research is particularly concerned with the legacies of colonialism and imperialism and the ways these histories continue to shape migration, belonging and cultural identity. Their own experience of growing up in Europe with Indian heritage provides an intimate point of departure, particularly around assimilation and the distance from the culture of their family’s origin. Yet Tara uses this experience to enter broader questions around diasporic existence, collective memory and cultural inheritance.
This research also leads them to question how non-Western objects and histories are classified and represented within Western institutions. They examine distinctions between art and artefact, between objects understood as functional or ethnographic and those granted the status of autonomous works of art. Such classifications shape which histories become visible, which forms of knowledge are legitimised and which relationships between objects, communities and their uses are forgotten.
The movement between research and artistic form is central to Tara’s practice. Archival fragments, theoretical references and personal narratives do not translate directly into illustrations of research, but gradually become material, images, movements and texts. Their videos bring bodies and movement into the work, while writing creates another space in which historical fragments, memories and fictional possibilities can coexist. Across these different media, Tara allows research to be transformed rather than simply represented, creating connections between what is read, remembered, observed and physically experienced.
Tara’s engagement with history therefore remains open to uncertainty. They are drawn to the space between fact, memory and fiction, where archival gaps can become spaces for speculation and where fragments can generate other forms of narrative. Their methodology begins not with fixed conclusions but with reading, collecting, observing and allowing ideas to gradually permeate the work. Poetry, cultural studies, racial geography and post and decolonial theories become part of this constellation of references.
Jeanne Tara creates situations in which questions can remain active. Their installations, sculptures, videos and writings ask how histories move between individuals, objects and spaces, and how what has been inherited, forgotten or displaced might be encountered again. In this sense, their practice is concerned not only with what survives, but with the possibility of transmitting differently: through material, gesture, memory, fiction and, ultimately, through our own bodies.
Danniel Tostes
Awards, Residencies, Collections & Grants
2026
Swiss Institute, Pro Helvetia, New York, US (residency)
2025
Fondation Simon I. Patiño, Cité internationale des arts, Paris, FR (residency and grant)
Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH (acquisition)
City of Geneva Grants, CH (nomination)
2024
Espace eeeeh, Nyon, CH (w. FAAB G collective) (residency)
CREPA, Plateau de Retord, Ain, FR (residency)
2023
RITA, Turbigo, IT (residency)
Kiefer Hablitzel Prize, Basel, CH (nomination)
Art Fund, Plan-les-Ouates, CH (acquisition)
Surville Artists’ Studio, Lancy, CH
2022
CERCCO – Contemporary Ceramics, Geneva, CH (residency)
COVID-Culture Artistic Research Grant, Geneva, CH
Bise Noire, Ionian Sea (residency)
2021
Le Commun Artistic Research Grant, Geneva, CH
2020
City of Geneva Grants, CH (nomination)
Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, CH (residency)
2019
Urgent Paradise, Lausanne, CH (group residency)
City of Geneva Artists’ Studio
2018
Atelier Genevois de Gravure Contemporaine, Geneva, CH (residency)
2017
MAC de Pérouges, FR (group residency)
2015
Caran d’Ache Prize, Geneva, CH
Solo & Duo Exhibitions
2026
Mittel und Wege, Milieu, Bern, CH (w. Mathias Pfund)
Archives des artistes, Cité internationale des arts, Paris × Widefield, Geneva, CH (w. Monika Emmanuelle Kazi)
2025
Your Time Is Vanishing Swiftly, DBKAPADDOCK, Brussels, BE
Across Spaces, Espace Libre × Crash Gurzelen, Biel/Bienne, CH (w. Alexander Fritz)
2024
La force des choses, PANO, Vevey, CH
HYBRIDS, UNA Galleria, Piacenza, IT
2023
L’utile et l’agréable, Andata.Ritorno, Geneva, CH
2022
La mesure des possibles, Espace 3353, Carouge, CH
L’arrière-cour, Art Au Centre, Geneva, CH (w. Vicente Lesser)
2021
Surfaces défendues, Halle Nord, Geneva, CH
2020
Furtive Diversion, Espace TOPIC, Geneva, CH
2018
Capsule 1.47: Jeanne Tara, Halle Nord, Geneva, CH
Group Exhibitions
2026
Ce qui dérive résiste encore, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH (w. FAAB G collective)
DivergenX, Ressources Urbaines, Geneva, CH
Does It Ring a Bell?, Royal College of Art, London, UK
A PHANTOM WITH LIMBS OF STEEL, Kurator*In, Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Rapperswil-Jona, CH
2025
Knowing Bodies, Museo Casa Rusca, Locarno, CH
Paris des vi(ll)es, Intimités publiques, Scénos Urbaines x Cité internationale des arts, Festival d’automne, Paris, FR
City of Geneva Grants, Le Commun, Geneva, CH
De la grande à la cité, La Maison du Jardinier, Haute-Saône, FR
Collections d’Artistes, Spielact Festival, Le Commun, Geneva, CH
Festival Histoire et Cité, Geneva, CH
2024
À nos corps en feu, Espace eeeeh, Nyon, CH (w. FAAB G collective)
weihnachtsausstellung, Lange + Pult, Zurich, CH
Art en Chapelles, Haut-Doubs, FR
As We Carried Away, GO GO GO, Le Grütli, Geneva, CH
2023
Familiar Spirits, La Julienne, Plan-les-Ouates, CH
From My Living Room, PAV Living Room, Geneva, CH
Primo incontro, RITA, Turbigo, IT
Kiefer Hablitzel Prize, Swiss Art Awards, Art Basel, Basel, CH
Ver sin Mirar, Publica Espacio, San Juan, Puerto Rico
2022
Patterns & Order, Villa Bernasconi, Lancy, CH
I Want You So Bad, Soul2Soul, Geneva, CH
2021
Exercice de Parade, EAC Les Halles, Porrentruy, CH
2020
City of Geneva Grants, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH
2019
Jungkunst, Winterthur, CH
L’arrêt du bus qui parle, Urgent Paradise, Lausanne, CH
Interviews, Publications & Press
2026
Écouter les murs : architecture, art et transmission, conversation with Charlotte Morel, les amis du MAMCO
2024
Jeanne Tara « Hybrids » UNA / Piacenza, Flash Art Italia
HYBRIDS, KubaParis
Jeanne Tara, Contemporary Art Library
HYBRIDS, The Italian Art Guide
2023
Des décors d’architecture font danser l’histoire, Irène Languin, La Tribune de Genève
L’utile et l’agréable, KubaParis
L’empreinte de la mémoire, Le Chat Perché
L’utile et l’agréable de Jeanne Tara, Angèle Cartier, Epic Magazine
2022
La mesure des possibles, KubaParis
La camera, Jeanne Tara, 100 copies, 40 pages, Miami Books, Geneva, CH
2021
CULT | La vie d’artiste : Jeanne Tara, Michel Thorimbert, Genève – Ville de Culture
Interview with Jeanne Tara, Daniel Lichterwaldt, Les Nouveaux Riches
2020
Jeanne Tara, Contemporary Art Pool
Education
2017
Master’s Degree in Fine Arts – Critical Tools, ERG, Brussels, BE
2015
Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts, HEAD–Geneva, CH