Judith Kakon (1988, Basel, Switzerland), currently lives and works in Basel. She received her Master in Fine Arts from Bard MFA, New York (2017) and her Bachelor degree from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (2013). Her work encompasses sculpture, installation, image-making as well as the use of text sources, frequently borrowed from transnational English. The exhibition as medium plays an intrinsic role in her way of working, occasionally this also results in curatorial and collaborative work. Recent shows were hosted by venues such as La criée, centre d’art contemporain, Rennes (2023), Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (2021), Kunsthalle Basel (2020), Coalmine, Winterthur (2020), Ventilator, Tel Aviv (2019), SALTS, Birsfelden (2019), Anorak at the project space of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2018), Riverside Space, Worblaufen (2018) Stiftung Alexander Bürkle, Freiburg (2017), Kunsthaus Langenthal (2017), Studioli, Rome (2016), Taylor Macklin, Zurich (2015), Kunsthaus Glarus (2015).

Fore more informations, CV and Portfolio please contact: judith.kakon@me.com

GRAND AIR, 2023, Sophie Kaplan

The Swiss artist Judith Kakon is interested in the history of forms, their circulations and uses. Her work explores the question of reuse and displacement, between public space and exhibition space. In GRAND AIR, the artist’s first solo exhibition in France, she offers us a new perspective on Christmas lights, here taken out of their context and accompanied by a collection of images.

The installation in La Criée’s central space, Recess and Incline (s’arrêter et s’incliner) is composed of hundreds of Christmas lights, presented unlit as if asleep. They are arranged on metal supports inspired by warehouse shelving, custom-designed by the artist, artifacts somewhere between minimalist sculptures and utilitarian objects. Their presentation is also inspired by “Schaulager” (a melding of the words “Schauen” and “Lagern”, which mean, respectively, “seeing” and “storing”). The installation takes the form of open storage, guaranteeing the public’s access to the works when they are not being exhibited. Judith Kakon’s installation blurs the boundaries between the storeroom and the gallery, as well as between interior and exterior, the beautiful and the useful.

Taken out of their usual context, visitors now see these objects, part of the city’s heritage, in a new light. Through this game of displacement, Judith Kakon transmutes their forms and uses. Maybe some of us have already wondered what happens to the Christmas lights once the holiday season is over?
This shift also reconfigures the art centre and the expectations of an exhibition: here it is not the art that leaves the walls to occupy the public space, but the city centre’s streets that infiltrate the white cube. This reconfiguration lead us to question what we are looking at: Can a shelf be a sculpture? From which models do they borrow and what do they tell us about the circulation of forms?

Judith Kakon is fascinated by the emotional and political charge of Christmas lights. By choosing to present them unlit, rolled up and suspended, she forces us to take another perspective on what we think we know. The installation invites us to change our point of view and to consider a formal reading of the lights. Certain patterns, such as scrolls and arabesques, are universal in nature, while others are inspired by local culture, such as Breton embroidery. Their forms evoke each element’s visual culture and give space to varied interpretations: here a windmill for a child, there a helicoidal tower like the Tower of Babel or Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1920), the most recognisable of the Russian Constructivist’s projects. The history of Christmas light designs is testament to the globalisation of cultural exchanges and society’s secularisation. The lights have gradually taken on a more “worldly” character, embodying a more familial and more commercial spirit.

The installation Recess and incline resonates with our current era in two ways: the project is produced eco-responsibly, using local resources. The lights from Rennes Métropole’s lighting division are redeployed and thus “shine” with a forceful symbolic charge, against the backdrop of today’s energy restrictions. They also highlight the shifts in the production methods of public lighting: incandescent and halogen bulbs have been replaced by LEDs. Certain lighting installations have been tested over time, while others are new and have never been installed in the city. This evolution of the lighting, destined to be shown temporarily, resonates with that of artworks. The shelves Judith Kakon designed can be modified and used in other places, with lights or for other purposes.

In the second room, the entire surface of the wall is covered by a collection of images, installed like a Salon hang. The different series exhibited echo the main room and reflect the artist’s concerns: archiving, the circulation of images, and the transformation of a standardised form (an umbrella, a scan of a mailed parcel, or an email) into a singular artistic object. In all these images, Judith Kakon shines a light on the paradoxes of capitalism, intertwining personal, intimate experiences with standard modes of production (online shopping platforms, advertising). Her works are inspired by the concept of “emotional capitalism”, as theorised by American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild and developed by the social scientist Eva Illouz. This concept describes the way capitalism produces standardised modes of interactions and transforms emotions into commodities.
With GRAND AIR, Judith Kakon’s subtly political art invites us to look at the objects, movements and relationships of our globalised world by shifting our usual points of view and localisation. Her work questions the cultural value of mass-produced images and products. By moving them from one space to another, from one temporality to another, these objects shed their everyday casualness to access, temporarily, the status of artwork. With her keen photographer’s eye and sense of framing, Judith Kakon challenges us to question what we take for granted, what is behind or alongside the representations that surround us.

¤, 2020, Kunsthalle Basel back wall

Open on your computer the leading word processing software or the most popular search engine, and on the screen, you will encounter a frame of grey. Cold, artificial, and yet unobtrusive, a color between mouse and cement, it shrouds every smart phone and personal computer display, which is to say, it has become ubiquitous in our daily lives. It is precisely this digital screen grey that Judith Kakon has chosen as the backdrop for her new artwork, ¤, sited on the ex- terior rear wall of Kunsthalle Basel. She takes as her title a sign that denotes an unspecified currency, first encoded for computers in 1972. Standing in for the absent information normally provided by a specific currency symbol (such as $, €, or £), ¤ typically acts as a typographic placeholder and thus expresses any or all possible monies, great or no value at once. The artist disperses the icon, along with the percentage symbol (%) and the words ESTATE, REAL, TRUST, PRIME, GAME, EMPIRE, and the numeral 2020, across the grey wall.
These symbols and terms seem to float as if on a giant digital screen; otherwise frequently conjoined terms, like “real estate” or “prime trust,” appear here decoupled from one another. The terminology Kakon uses is derived from today’s global realty trade and the turbo capi- talist circulation of currency that accompanies it, yet each of the characters making up the words is written out in a graphic adaptation of a 15th century font, rendered in the sort of wrought iron one might find on an old-fashioned gate, fence, or balcony railing.* The artwork thus collides references to the digital, currency, and financial trading with an ancient font and the evident craftwork of hand-worked metal. It is a sculptural installation that invites decryption.
Perhaps it is the “2020,” appearing among the other terms and signs, that most tellingly exposes the artist’s intentions. It locates the project in a particular year of uncertainty, in which the repercussions of late capitalism’s cruelty have been achingly on display. Revealed is the power that builds real estate empires, collects rent, and evicts—and guards the shuttered gates and fences of sharply delimited territories and borders.
A changing display of cellophane-wrapped wilted flowers (always already at the end of their life) is tucked each week between the lettering and the wall, as if to mourn loss or commemo- rate the fallen without it being clear just who has died or what exactly is being memorialized. This performative gesture, turning Kunsthalle Basel’s back wall into a contemporary vanitas, layers Kakon’s project with a peculiar poignancy. The starting point for so much of the artist’s work—and ¤ is no exception—is a keen observation of the urban environment around her, an unpacking of the politics implicit in the everyday forms and signs found within it. It is thus not by chance that the artist conceived her artwork in relation to the public space from which it is visible, which is to say, in proximity to high-end real estate brokerage firms, several private banking headquarters, and Freie Strasse, a pedestrian shopping street whose perpetuation of free market exchange is on full display. Here, Kakon presents a quietly mordant reflection on the circulation of currency and care, conveying how the ravages of financial speculation—for which the private accumulation of wealth, capital, and property seems merely a game—impacts the lives of many.

– Elena Filipovic

Judith Kakon, Swiss Art Awards 2019

The exhibition space is flanked by two flat, fan-like shapes suspended at waist height in each of the two
rear corners. Tilted slightly downward, they seem almost to bow toward the center of the room. Perfect,
conical ridges articulate their upper surfaces, each narrowing to a pin’s width at the back. The strictness
of their formal economy extends to the sensitivity of their placement, which implicates all three walls of
the exhibition space while calling into question the Cartesian logic of its preexisting architecture by
introducing a tilted axis. Even as they function convincingly at the level of abstract form, it is worth
digging deeper into the symbolic and social connotations they also carry. Key to unpacking these is the
fact that the scalloped fan shapes are actually bronze reproductions of inserts that are normally placed in
outdoor corners to discourage public urination. Against the urinal’s well known history as a trope of 20th
century sculpture, the two bronzes pose as anti-urinals that would, in practice, redirect urine onto the
urinator.
The title of the work, Commons, signals not only these objects’ stake in the discourse surrounding the
regulation of public space, but also related concerns that take form in the two other discrete works which
they bracket. Throughout Kakon’s installation, one finds the politics of public space — here understood
to include the space of national or cultural identity — interwoven with a politics of the (gendered) body.
One begins to sense this in the digestive connotations of many of the materials and images that Kakon
incorporates: plumbing components that deliver water or draw away excrement, or advertisements meant
to stimulate the appetite, for example. On the center wall, a vertically mounted PVC tube extends from
the middle to the top of the wall, finishing with a light bulb. The cables run through the tube and spill
downward in to one of the pre-existing maws of the booth. It could be a street lamp, or an oversized
processional candle, or an illuminated waste channel. Next to it hangs a series of prints derived from an
image used in an advertising campaign for the now discontinued chocolate bar “Swiss-li” which was
produced by the Swiss chocolatier Camille Bloch. Kakon intervenes in the image by cropping it, focusing
on its depictions of presumably Swiss-produced commodities: wheat and almonds, heaped abundantly
beneath blue skies. Like the bronzes, the cropped images are tiltings in their own way (tiltings of the gaze
toward the original image’s margins) that fracture the advertisement’s coherence (the chocolate bar itself
is nowhere to be seen) while locating an emotional program underneath that relies on an idealized vision
of national agriculture. By attaching the diminutive suffix “li” to the English “Swiss,” the product name
shifts the tone of address toward something more intimate, but also perhaps more childlike. The
additional fact that the advertisement was designed by Kakon’s mother in the 1980s suggests the
hereditary nature of national feeling, even as it coalesces around objects that themselves no longer exist.
There is a silent quality to Kakon’s work that stems not from the absence of language but from the work’s
engagement with modes of experience that are often pre-verbal: appetite, sexuality, digestion, prayer,
architecture. Operating from this place, her works manage to fluidly traverse contradictory networks of
social laws, image systems, and memory that we unconsciously inhabit and are inhabited by — and to
uncover perversities in the silences.

— Scott Roben

The Untold Compromise

WeWork launched its first shared workspace in New York in 2010, leasing office spaces to startups on the basis of flexible membership plans. Today, WeWork owns hundreds of spaces across twenty two countries and manages more than one million square meters of real estate. Following WeWork's success, more companies cropped up worldwide, offering a broad range of spaces and membership deals to their customers. One could argue that WeWork anticipated an entire discourse on simultaneity: the global phenomenon they initiated allowed entrepreneurs to book office spaces in multiple cities at any given time. Simultaneity, or as Carl Gustav Jung coined it Synchronicity, is a term that refers to events connected by both causality and meaning. Today, the term “simultaneity” has become widely used in Internet terminology, in relation to online communication, movement, preservation, aggregation, modularity and liquidity - all of which form the undercurrent of Judith Kakon’s presented works. Judith Kakon decided to book a meeting room for half a day from a coworking office company on Rothschild Boulevard. Kakon's decision sets up both the spatial and durational parameters for her exhibition, The Untold Compromise.

After accessing the 11th floor of this skyscraper, the visitor will enter The Untold Compromise facing West. At nighttime, the view from the large translucent glass walls is hazy and dark. From such a distance, one can hardly see the nearby Mediterranean Sea. Yet a sense of liquidity sweeps through the different works that Judith Kakon chose to momentarily display in the meeting room.

Considered to be one of the first long shelf life products, the Medjool is a sun-dried date; a fruit from which most liquids have naturally evaporated. In contrast, Le Flacon (the flask) was invented to conserve valuable liquids and prevent their deterioration upon contact with the air. Judith Kakons' “date-flacons” mimic old casting and glassblowing techniques that go back to The Roman Empire. Made out of glass, her Medjools are empty vessels charged with undefined potential: that of being filled with liquids and meaning.

Disparate Images is a photographic series that presents archetype images of wrecked umbrellas. Each time this mass-produced modular shelter is dismantled by the wind, its disposal qualities are reaffirmed. As such, the umbrella exemplifies a global consumer product that becomes unique only once it breaks. Similarly in Judith Kakon's works, what seems to be identical is actually in a state of a constant flux, as Kakon avoids repeating the same image twice.

– Ishai Shapira-Kalter

The Image and the Figurative – Reflections on the work of Judith Kakon

Since the onset of digitalization, at the latest, the (visual) medium and art form of photography have undergone lasting ruptures, both in terms of technique and content. In response to the question of how a photographic image can attain significance – relevance for the individual and society – investigations have been conducted across disciplines using analog and digital sources, moving images, installative and conceptual approaches, all in equal measure. Accordingly, Judith Kakon’s artistic endeavor likewise does not express itself through singular works alone. Instead, having studied photography in New York and Jerusalem, the artist primarily works on the basis of specific installations and locations – she translates images into the spaces defined for them, which stand in intimate relation to one another. Through a process of experience, research and discovery, the ensuing spatial image comes to represent a theoretical inquiry into our visual memory.

Even the spatial installation executed in the context of the ceremony for the 2017 Alexander Bürkle Art Award is likewise to be understood as an interrelated setting. Untitled (Learn to lay Brick) I to V are the titles of five large-scale images that were exhibited there for the very first time. Custom-made steel frames were laid on the plastic foil-covered floor of the exhibition space and subsequently set with liquid concrete. The building material is not applied in a conventional manner, rather colored using various amounts of iron oxide or magnetite pigments in iridescent shades of red. On the one hand, the works of art contain a minimalistic aesthetic, heavily influenced by the appearance of concrete and steel. The title of the works refers to the obvious, to the conventional, functional application of the material: Concrete is used for construction all over the world, it can be obtained by anyone – it’s universal, so to speak. On the other hand, what stands out is the transformation in the appearance of the concrete: the plastic foil does not result in an image-side that looks matte, coarse or sandy, but rather one that is akin to the impression left by smooth, velvety and evenly laid foil, nearly appearing organic. During the Middle Ages, iron oxide was used in the production of mirrors, as it was able to produce a reflection when processed in a certain manner. The creases that arise on account of the foil, as well as the soft colors, permeate and shape the works, belying the massive weight which we connect with the materials being used. The dark contour of the steel frame also alludes to hints of processing and traces of material, such as shiny metallic sanding marks or rust spots in other places. Not necessary poured out to the exact edges, the viewer is repeatedly invited to retrace the stepby- step process behind the formation of the image, the physically manufactured act behind it, and the material’s immanent aesthetics which are borne of its material characteristics and artistic transformation. As such, the five works Untitled (Learn to lay Brick) are not merely a negative reproduction of the floor but also represent a potential appeal to awareness and visibility. The overarching question posed here reads: What are our expectations regarding the image? What is it meant to show us? How do we recognize the ideas which the artist intends for us to grasp?

The installation is also composed of two highly exciting steel constructions, The left is formed from the right, featuring arches onto which an LED light chain made of small illuminated points has been strung. Kakon has adapted their form from street lamps, the photographic depictions of which can be found in her archive. The handling of these forms does, however, appear to be even more crucial than the design vocabulary which Kakon cites, potentially carrying us off, at least in spirit, to some far-away place. Especially striking is that two arches laid inside one another reflect and therefore reproduce each other – the entire street lamp is duplicated within the space – and are also connected through the chain of lights. While the aspect of materiality once appeared primary, in the very next moment, the repeating design – the principle of duplication, defining the associative pitch within the spatial context with all of its architectural and art-historical implications – as well as through the immateriality of the light, suddenly becomes incomprehensible yet at the same time all encompassing. Kakon uses the possibility of defying the physical and ideal explicitness of an image to make the viewer aware of the context. Her installations always relate to the given space, yet also to that which is represented, and also explicitly to the viewer’s space. The brightness emitted from the LED chain of lights bathes the exhibition space and the viewers in a warm light. Along with the existing architecture, this feature was conceived together with the installation.

The associated played-back audiovideo installation Ghost Tones consists of an 18-minute sound file in which a velvety, melodious and nearly rhythmic female voice speaking English reads encyclopedic definitions of the term “accent”, understood as being a particular inflection, pronunciation or intonation, linguistically applied for emphasis and accentuation of a certain word, phrase, syllable or letter, or visually considered, for example, as a colorful accent. A poem follows in which each letter of the alphabet is assigned a line of the poem while the video displays a flickering street lamp which finally pauses for a moment to emit its light. Language is the main humanly means of communication. The application of language and writing represent one of the recurring tools used in Kakon’s installations. Spoken, written down, saved to data carriers and available for listening or for reading. Stickers were created in 2016 onto which the e-mail correspondence between the artist and chinese factory workers was printed. Not a single detail was left to chance, not a font nor the text size, not the pitch nor the speed of the speaker, and neither the choice of English – for each of these details carry information within them. An “accent” provides insights into our identity and our background – it embodies a cultural code. Moreover, accentuation aims to highlight something. What becomes all the more symbolic through this obvious dichotomy is that we simply ignore the countless definitions of accent which the speaking voice recites without any trace of an accent – entirely monotonous and the same. The only aspect that is accented is the imploring tone.

In one of her essays, the artist herself alludes to Édouard Glissant, the French writer, philosopher and pioneer of the debate surrounding multiculturalism.1 Along with an expanded concept of the photographic image, Kakon advocates a transcultural perspective on contemporary art. National identity is not congruent with cultural identity, being shaped through a transnational medial system of reference. Consequently, Kakon’s installations are likewise never enclosed, but are rather to be understood as impetus for ongoing thought processes. The artist’s projects and work stays, with her range of experiences and contexts, ensuing motifs and works of art, stretch over a web of references which will also constantly be cited, adapted and connotated anew in the future. The seriousness of this topic is also likely so impressive on account of that certain degree of lightness which is always ascribed to her: like found objects randomly dispersed in a room, ocher-colored glass vessels appear in the form of dates. Date Series, Barhi, is the title they assume. This widespread and much-exported food can practically be considered a cultural product of the Middle East. Yet each of the 50 glass vessels is also a unique piece that was molded using a barhi date. Moreover, the use of glass as a material was also not by chance: it is used for the purposes of storage in many diverse contexts, it is durable and it leaves no residue behind. It is also significant in view of the history of photography as, due in part to the characteristics described above, the very first “photos” were captured on panes of glass. The special emphasis of the original is, as such, set in opposition to the indicated serial process as well as to the reflection of the street lamps.

Kakon constantly poses questions as to the background of her of work: Why exactly am I making this sort of art and in this form? The questions that may arise during the reception are: How can a particular stance be communicated? Kakon acts as an observer and commentator of the sensitive interrelations between globalization, society and trade. Her installations reflect both her and our realities of life in the 21st century – and her precise formations imbue the complexities held in them with meaning.

– Eveline Weber

1 Glissant states that, in today’s world, no culture can exist in isolation from another; rather, cultures are constantly developing further through a process of mutual influence and enrichment. For him, this concept of transculturalism has been a prerequisite for any form of artistic production in the recent past.

A WORD IS A SHADOW THAT FALLS ON A LOT OF THINGS
Co-organized with Mia Sanchez

With:
Sadie Benning
Lygia Clark
Manthia Diawara
Mel Elberg
Selina Grüter & Michèle Graf
Hans Josephsohn
Judith Kakon
Adam Kaplan
Lucie Kolb (Brand-New-Life)
Mia Sanchez
Alan Segal
Anselm Stalder
The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift
Layla Winter

You say that when you speak this language, you are a different person. Or rather, you become one of the many that are your identities. The connection to your body changes, first to the inner life, your emotions and thoughts, as well as how you address and behold your surroundings. Is it dependent, at the level of society, on the language’s heritage, at the level of the individual, on your ties to personal experiences? The question is how language defines identity and vice-versa. How can this correlation be shown, challenged or shifted?

To project identity (on to the model). To make up one’s own by referencing others. To create
an exclusive identity by way of a secret language. Or to invent a new language defined by the personal. To split identity and allow for multiplicity and ambiguity. To hide behind or take on another(‘s). Or to aim for featurelessness altogether. It carries with it the matter of perspective, which is one of inclusion and exclusion, of the self and the other. How to be oneself without shutting out others, how to open up to others without losing oneself?

If, as you say, the south is the body, the projected place of desire, the image of light and life and warmth, and the north is the head, the image of death and darkness and freezing
– these binaries are the restrictions to grapple with. Accepting existing paths of identification, predetermined and prescribed, can trap and imprison. To find representation for the ideas to manifest, in form and materiality. Now they take space, as does the shadow: Body and other and changing but bound. The simultaneous existence of many. Like the Möbius strip, which has only one boundary, there is no outside and no in.

‘I see a ring,’ said Bernard, ‘hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in a loop of light.’

‘I see a slab of pale yellow,’ said Susan, ‘spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.’

‘I hear a sound,’ said Rhoda, ‘cheep, chirp; cheep chirp; going up and down.’

‘I see a globe,’ said Neville, ‘hanging down in a drop against the enormous flanks of some hill.’

‘I see a crimson tassel,’ said Jinny, ‘twisted with gold threads.’

‘I hear something stamping,’ said Louis. ‘A great beast’s foot is chained. It stamps, and stamps, and stamps.’

‘Look at the spider’s web on the corner of the balcony,’ said Bernard. ‘It has beads of water on it, drops of white light.’

‘The leaves are gathered round the window like pointed ears,’ said Susan.

‘A shadow falls on the path,’ said Louis, ‘like an elbow bent.’…‘ I burn, I shiver,’ said Jinny, ‘out of this sun, into this shadow.’

Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931

– Geraldine Tedder

A Stream With Bright Fish
Judith Kakon

A first step in the process of constructing a concrete tilt-up wall is forming a level horizontal plane onto which the wall will be cast. A relatively straightforward procedure allows for such a wall to be formed right where it is meant to stand thus making the installation a simple tilting into place. Judith Kakon’s tilt-up concrete sculptures with their slight tint of color and bodily proportions oscillate between a stark formalism and a sensitive materiality. In a former version of these works, the pressed absence of two sides of a coin marks both walls acting like a time capsule as though she is preparing for the future by selecting what should be archived. In her most recent work she replicates the cast form with walls that perform as images, at once one thing and then another.

In Man and the Sacred , Roger Caillois describes the way in which the left is formed from the right, always a perversion of the other, stating “...gaucherie is a sign of evil intent and augury of failure. It is at once maladroitness, at once cause and effect of every tortuous, crooked, or oblique power, of every false calculation or maneuver. It is everything uncertain and everything that falls short of its goal; and that which is uncertain and cause of suspicion and fear, all that is imperfect...” Something of this pervades Judith’s methods, as though drawn to the periphery, her images and installations demand a sideways view, a view askance, a view through and into. Teetering on the edge of the perverse, her work is not afraid to employ the deceits that are often used to construct auras of power in order to find a ground for subversion. Frequently she utilizes a two-way mirror as a shifting entity that reveals and conceals, its form both affirmation and negation, aesthetic and duplicitous, an opening and a closing. She subverts a traditional narrative of the right versus the left by rendering both as versions of themselves and in so doing challenges the presumed deficiencies of an oblique perspective.

Observing the way Judith works, in particular the way she has of searching for the elemental, is like watching a skilled diviner holding out a forked rod to reveal a source of water. The spaces occupied by her work consistently negate a progressive narrative of linear time. If anything, the cadence of Judith’s work seems to find structure around a form of arrhythmia within which the past and the present collapse causing things we’ve seen previously to become things seen anew. Her capacity to embrace and dismantle apparent contradictions is evident in the way she employs images that appear and disappear in shifting forms and are often complicated by pulsating light sources and reflections. Judith’s work entangles the viewer in the act of looking, a diagonal glance becomes the necessary lens from which to find a foothold in a practice that has a slippery intangibility; the imagery Judith employs is inherently damaged, existing always in a state of interference within an ever expanding periphery.

– Phoebe D’heurle

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© for the works: the artist
© for the texts: the authors
© for the images: the photographers

Judith Kakon, 2018. judith.kakon@me.com

Design: Ronnie Fueglister http://www.ronniefueglister.ch

Coding: Jonathan Kakon http://drimaeie.com