Marta Margnetti: Serenata /
New HEADS: JPP & Alexandra Sheherazade Salem 

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is pleased to show new works of three young artists. In the solo presentation Serenata, Marta Margnetti’s intricate works fill the exhibition space with bronze cicadas, pottery serigraphs and sound installations. At the same time, the New HEADS prize for HEAD—Genève graduates takes the artists JPP (from “j’en peux plus,” French for “I can’t take it anymore”) and Alexandra Sheherazade Salem to St.Gallen.

While the three artists each work in their own aesthetic, they share a common starting point: a personal enquiry into their own family history. What roles does our family model for us? How much do we take on from our parents? What does it mean to outgrow internalised ideas—and which values do we hold on to? The artists pursue these questions with very different means, touching on such major themes as domesticity, generations, love, collective memory, womanhood and language.

Marta Margnetti (b. 1989 in Mendrisio, Switzerland) works in numerous materials and textures. Glazed ceramics, traditional construction techniques, delicate bronzes, sound installations and found objects run through the practice of the Ticino artist. In her largest institutional exhibition in German-speaking Switzerland to date, Margnetti develops existing works while also presenting new installations created for the Kunst Halle. At the centre of her solo show is a very personal sound piece based on a conversation with her mother. In her search for the worldviews and self-perceptions of the women in her family, Margnetti collects memories, sounds and atmospheres, weaving them into various materials. In the process, the visual environment of the family becomes as tangible as the invisible space of memory and imagination.

JPP (b. 1997 in Geneva) and Alexandra Sheherazade Salem (b. 1996 in La Gruyère, Switzerland) are graduates of HEAD—Genève Master’s programme in Fine Arts and winners of the New HEADS prize for young artists. They share an artistic practice interested in questions related to identity and language. The encounter, confrontation and collaboration with their parents plays a decisive role in both their work: while the Albanian artist JPP translates her mother’s handwriting into a repetitive wall pattern, Salem videographically re-enacts a backgammon game with her father. The artists trace the complex experiences of migration, familiarity, alienation and belonging that have shaped both their parents’ life stories as well as their own.

Artist bios
Marta Margnetti (b. 1989 in Mendrisio, Switzerland) lives and works in Lugano, Switzerland. Margnetti co-founded the artist-run-space Sonnenstube (Lugano, Switzerland) and was co-director of the independent cultural space Morel (Lugano, Switzerland) from 2018 to 2020. Solo and duo exhibitions (selection): Galleria Daniele Agostini, Lugano, Switzerland (2023); Photobastei, Zurich (2022); Mayday, Basel (2021). Group exhibitions (selection): Swiss Art Awards (2023); Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Neringa/LT (2022); Lateral Roma, Rome/IT (2022); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2018); Museo Cantonale d‘Arte, Ex Macello, Lugano, Switzerland (2017).

Xheneta Imeri (b. 1997 in Geneva) lives and works with the pseudonym JPP in Geneva. Solo and group exhibition (selection): Art Genève, Geneva (2024); Dampfzentrale, Berne, Switzerland (2023); Lehaim, Sofia/BG (2023); The National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina/XK (2023); Topic, Geneva (2022); Buropolis, Marseille/FR (2022). Performances (selection): Plaine de Plainpalais, Geneva (2023); Wallstreet, Fribourg, Switzerland (2021).

Alexandra Sheherazade Salem (b. 1996 in La Gruyère, Switzerland) lives and works in Geneva. Solo and group exhibitions (selection): Material, Zurich (2023); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2023); Le 125, Bruxelles/BE (2023); Arsenic, Lausanne, Switzerland (2022); Forde, Geneva (2022). Screenings: Bangalore Queer Film Festival, Bangalore/IN (2023); Selection 5e, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2021). Performances (selection): Plaine de Plainpalais, Geneva (2023); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2021).

The exhibition by Marta Margnetti is made possible by Schweizer Kulturstiftung Pro Helvetia and Città di Lugano.
The exhibition New HEADS: JPP and Alexandra Sheherazade Salem is supported by HEAD—Genève.

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is supported by Stadt St.Gallen, Kulturförderung Kanton St.Gallen, Swisslos, Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung, Martel AG. The educational programme is enabled by Raiffeisen.