Atiéna R. Kilfa: Wonder Lust

K​​unstmuseum St.Gallen proudly presents Wonder Lust, the first solo exhibition in Switzerland by the French-born, Berlin-based artist Atiéna R. Kilfa (b. 1990). The installation revolves around a new video commission for Kunstmuseum St. Gallen’s industrial exhibition venue, the LOK. Constructed between 1903 and 1911, this pioneering former railway building recalls the peak of Eastern Switzerland’s textile industry. It is from within this icon of a grand past that Kilfa’s new work reflects on the romanticization of imperialist conventions.

Projected against a wall that follows the Lokremise’s rotational design, the video Landfall stages a panoramic view over what appears to be a vast landscape at sunrise or sunset, as perceived through the eyes of an enigmatic man, a “Rückenfigur.” This trope, which consists of a figure, seen from the back, contemplating an evocative and often dramatic landscape, recurs throughout the history of painting and cinema alike. In subverting the figure’s object of contemplation, replacing a distant land with a mere maquette, Kilfa’s work stages a form of playacting that both exposes and deflates the pomposity of the heroic set-up.

Two additional works are part of Wonder Lust, both of which further break down the production of “wonder” as a prop. The print Landfall at Sunrise is a still, derived from an unused cut of the video, in which we see, in a large close-up, the reflection of the landscape in the figure’s eyes, bringing yet another point of view to bear on the figure’s relation to the landscape. A “wind machine” is exhibited as well, a type of foley instrument that creates the illusion of the sound of wind by spinning a wooden drum against fabric. Such wind machines were originally used in the orchestral compositions of romantic operas such as Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and later came to be used in film.

The practice of Atiéna R. Kilfa homes in on cinematic archetypes and the intricate ways in which images are constructed in film—an apparatus which she unravels. Through video, photography, sculpture and installation, her work reflects on various traditions and technical mechanisms of production and post-production, inviting us to consider how images bear witness to time and to the ideologies whose histories we continue to inhabit.

Atiéna R. Kilfa’s works have been featured in group exhibitions at Galerina, London (2025); Museion, Bolzano (2024); Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2024); Heidi, Berlin (2024); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2023); 032c, Berlin (2023); Expo Chicago, Chicago (2022); Yaby, Madrid (2021); Elvira, Frankfurt (2021); and Galleria Zero, Milan (2021). She has had solo exhibitions at Den Frie, Copenhagen (2024); Cabinet, London (2023); Camden Art Centre, London (2023); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022); Liste Art Fair, Basel (2021); and Cell Project Space, London, UK (2020). Kilfa completed her studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt in 2022 and was awarded the ars viva Prize in 2024.

Melanie Bühler, Senior Curator at the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, on Atiéna R. Kilfa: “Atiéna R. Kilfa’s artistic work stands out for its astute analysis of longstanding motifs from visual culture. The newly commissioned video work “Landfall” dissects the Rückenfigur (“figure from the back”), a motif perhaps best known from German Romantic painting and still used today in film, television, and advertising as a symbol for a specific kind of heroism, one that transports itself through nostalgia, pathos and conquest. Kilfa consciously plays with immersion and illusion, as well as the interruption or rupture of these effects, to reveal the ideological underpinning of enduring, and highly affective, visual tropes as she carefully stages their fall.”

The exhibition is supported by the Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung and Senn Resources.

Curated by Melanie Bühler, Senior Curator Kunstmuseum St.Gallen