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Barbara Bandi
Humboldtstr. 35
3013 Bern Switzerland
Telephone: ++ (0) 31 331 96 27
Web: www.baba@bababandi.ch
Web: www.flyingcarpet.ch
Email: baba@bababandi.ch

Exhibition Statement: “Flying Carpet: A Border Crossing Print-Project”

Everywhere women perform - mostly little noticed and valued – essential basic work for survival. The project “Flying Carpet” tries to express this hidden potential of women. Everywhere women form working communities that are not influenced by competition and profit-thinking. The project Flying Carpet contributes to the understanding between the cultures without competition and profit.

Everywhere women are creators and preservers, often little seen, working on a sociopolitical level. The project Flying Carpet has through its widespread relational network a catalyzing effect: it gives a platform with many possibilities of presentation and exhibition, and thus formulates the necessary social critic.

What Does Flying Carpet Look Like? The project involves165 professional women of different disciplines, different cultures and 24 different countries who are weaving together in a symbolical way one carpet in the form of a limited edition of 30 prints or copies. Each participant works on a small scale: one page of 30 cm x 30 cm (11.7 x 11.7 inch) treating the theme “visions and energies from the women’s perspective”.

“The Flying Carpet involves different disciplines, transgresses borders, is not an INTER-national, but a NON-national project. The editions are collected into a Portfolio and exhibited in the different countries of the participants. At the end of the project the Portfolios are donated to a collection of graphic art or a similar institution of each participating country.

“Flying Carpet” was conceived and organized by three women artists from Switzerland, Susanne Glauser-Wasser, Carla Neis, and Barbara Bandi. This project has no pretension of art-globalization. In its unpretentious form, with its widespread interpretation of the theme, on every page the “Flying Carpet” mirrors the diversity of the daily, non-spectacular work of women. This is a non-profit project. All the participants support this project by sending their edition of 30 copies or prints without any remuneration.

BARBARA BANDI was born in Bern, where she works today in her own intaglio print-studio. She received her initial printmaking instruction from Ernst Scher and at the School of Art in Bern. Later she developed her knowledge in different courses in Switzerland and abroad. Her works were shown in single and group exhibitions and on Print Biennials in Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, and Poland. Barbara Bandi is Vice President of the Foundation Frauenkunstpreis and member of the managing-committee of SGBK (Swiss Society of women in Arts). In these functions she organized several national and international art-projects.

SUSANNE GLAUSER-WASSER lives in Allmendingen, Switzerland and was born 1939 in Geneva. From 1963-1968 she gave birth to four children. After her children became adults from 1989 to the present she has increased her own artistic work which encompasses drawings, printings, designing books and creating objects and sculptures. Her works were shown in single and group exhibitions in Switzerland. In 2000/2002 Susanne Glauser-Wasser represented the Swiss Women Artists at the Women and Art Exhibition in Sharjah, the Women`s Art Festival in Aleppo / Syria and the International Print Biennal in Hungary and Egypt. While not attending the conference, she worked with Barbara Bandi and Carla Neis in organizing the “Flying Carpet” exhibition. 

CARLA NEIS is an artist-printmaker working in Switzerland. Born in Barcelona, Neis trained in biology and Fine Arts at different Universities and Art-Schools in Switzerland. Since 2000 she has been teaching printmaking at the School of Art in Bern.She has been initiator, organizer, and participant of numerous international exchange-projects including the Portfolio-Projects “East-West” and “Flying Carpet”.Her installation works and artist’s books have been shown internationally and are included in many public collections. Her art reflects her concerns about existential issues interlaced with accurate observation as well as deep sensitivity to the materials and the different media used. She states “For me printmaking through its social and communicative character is a step towards peacemaking.” While not attending the conference, she worked with Barbara Bandi and Susanne Glauser-Wasser in organizing the “Flying Carpet” exhibition. 

Photo left to right: Carla Neis, Susanne Glauser, Barbara Bandi.