IF I WERE A BIRD
Rahel Hegnauer (*1968, Zurich), visual artist, has compiled almost all of her temporary site-specific works from the past 30 years into a portfolio ("Werkbuch"). This is her attempt to preserve them in the face of transience.
She works predominantly in public, urban or rural spaces, and her projects engage with the specific context of the respective exhibition site. Place and work belong together.

Places that no longer exist
In urban spaces in Zurich in the late 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, she realised installations and interventions in abandoned industrial buildings or housing estates released for temporary use. All these places no longer exist.

What spaces and places reveal
In the years that followed, when she frequently applied for artist-in-residence programmes abroad (particularly in India), it was the spatial, social, historical or political context of each location that interested her and guided her work in a particular direction.

In the publication IF I WERE A BIRD (self-published), which she designed and produced, Rahel Hegnauer now offers a comprehensive insight into her artistic practice. The works are documented in detail with images and text.

In addition to her introduction, Ralph Hauswirth (artist, CH), Dhanya Rajaram (art historian/curator, IN) and Sandi Paucic (art historian/educator and curator, CH) have each contributed a text to the book.