Disobedient Constellations

Vernissage September 5, 2025, 7 pm
Curated by Michael Hiltbrunner and Nina Wakeford

With Disobedient Constellations, the Rehmann Museum presents an exhibition that challenges its audience. This unconventional display of sculptures and objects from private collections illuminates not only the deep passion but sometimes also the loss experienced by their collectors.

Co-curator Nina Wakeford, an artist and professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a co-initiator of the Swiss Pavilion in Venice 2026, has collaborated with Michael Hiltbrunner, curator of the Rehmann Museum, and the collectors to curate a selection that breaks with convention. Together, they spotlight artworks with a feminist and queer perspective, which can be interpreted as resistant and idiosyncratic.

This fresh and often unexpected gaze leads to the works of 27 renowned artists — including Monica Bonvicini, Walter De Maria, Rainer Fetting, Bernhard Luginbühl, Ursi Luginbühl, and George Sugarman — forming surprising and "disobedient" constellations. They enter into a dialogue that dismantles established ways of seeing and thinking, enabling new interpretations.

In the exhibition, the artworks tell their unique, sometimes suppressed stories, reveal unexpected interpretations, or even shed light on earlier erroneous ones. Disobedient Constellations illuminates not only the artworks themselves but also how we humans interact with them: how we talk about them, classify, categorize, and interpret them.
Discover an exhibition that not only stimulates the senses but also encourages reflection and redefines established perspectives.

Nina Wakeford is Professor of Art and Director of Research in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. She studied sociology before training in fine art and is co-editor of the monograph Inventive Methods (2012). Her research interests include feminist, LGBT and queer communities. The artist and sociologist has already realized the exhibition Concrete Comeback ⚣⚢ Arms are for Linking (2024) at the Stadtgalerie Bern about the freedom and emancipation struggles of the regional lesbian and gay movement and confronted them with the history of the Cold War protection systems in Switzerland.
She initiated with the curators Gianmaria Andreetta (Lugano/Berlin), Luca Beeler (Zurich) the concept for the Swiss Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2026 and it is artistically developed by the full team further consisting of Miriam Laura Leonardi (Zurich), Lithic Alliance (Zurich/Brussels) and Yul Tomatala (Geneva).
Her recent work as an artist has been shown at Glasgow International, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, Reading International, the Science Gallery in London and Art on the Underground in London. Together with artist Elizabeth Price, she initiated the Artist Citizen Jury, which took place at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in 2022.

Website: https://www.gold.ac.uk/art/staff/wakeford-nina/


Artists
Patrick Angus, Tessa Boffin, Monica Bonvicini, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Walter De Maria, Elisabeth Eberle, Olivia Etter, Hans Falk, May Fasnacht, Rainer Fetting, Peter Fischli / David Weiss, Sylvie Fleury, Tarek Lakhrissi, Hans Lifka, Janis Löhrer, Bernhard Luginbühl, Ursi Luginbühl, Maria Sibylla Merian, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Erwin Rehmann, Walter Schnackenberg, George Sugarman, Cosima von Bonin, Nina Wakeford, Rebecca Warren

Collections
Suzanne Baumann in Laupen/Bern
Ruedi Bechtler in Zürich
Jacqueline Burckhardt in Zürich
Emanuel Hoffmann-Stiftung in Münchenstein/Basel
Thomas Fuchs / Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart
Galerie Ziegler SA und Serge Ziegler Galerie in Zürich
Kunstdepot Göschenen
Kerenidis Pepe Collection in Paris
Museum Schiff in Laufenburg