Season’s Greetings

To our friends, collaborators, partners, alumni, visitors, guest and all interested parties:
We want all the war, sickness, and death that 2022 brought to come to an end. We wish all of you a safer, more peaceful and joyous 2023.
Warmly, Team ILEA

We look back on an eventful year:
The art summer was packed with the 4th Art Safiental Biennale on the theme “Learning from the Earth”, the 4th Alps Art Academy and the 3rd ILEA Talks, three established initiatives returned and new ones were established and expanded: In the ILEA Residency, thanks to a cooperation with Pro Helvetia (To-gather), we could welcome for the first time two long-term guests from India: Shazeb Shaikh and Dharmendra Prasad, whose Grass Museum many still remember from the Biennale. Both are returning to the ILEA Gallery in Alpenblick next year with the exhibition “Grass Stories” (opening 12/31/22).
The exhibition in the ILEA Gallery shown in the expiring year presented Marcus Maeder with his research project ACLA, which will be continued next year and extended to a 2nd forest area together with the partners from ZHdK, WSL and the forest service Safiental. The second ongoing research project “Safientaler Gespräche”, Oral History with Dominik Landwehr, will also continue next year, undergo an evaluation and an opening.
In spring, the reader “Learning from the Earth” is announced, which we were recently able to finance through a crowdfunding campaign.
The construction of the ILEA Institute – the future umbrella structure for all projects, the competence and research center for art, ecology and creative industries in the peripheral Alpine region – which has already begun this year, will be further advanced in the coming year. Currently, this undertaking is receiving support from the UBS Cultural Foundation and the NRP Berggebietsprogramm.

We wish you happy holidays, a good start into the new year – and look forward to seeing you again in the Safiental in 2023.

(Photo: Grass Museum by Dharmendra Prasad, Art Safiental 2022)