Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève presents Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream

Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream, a group exhibition at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, is dedicated to the transformations that occur both within and without us. Life itself is constantly changing, in a condition of fleeting, unstable flux. Its constant reconfigurations began long before the appearance of mankind and will continue indefinitely.

Chrysalis honors the world’s never-ending metamorphosis as well as all of its organic (and inorganic) inhabitants. The exhibition examines the subject of mutability from a variety of formal, psychological, and political perspectives. In this exhibition, everything, every image, and every form is in transition—shifting from one condition to another, becoming something else, cycling through various identities.

Individuals, as well as plants and inanimate elements, become receptacles for these numerous identities. Polyptychs are anthropomorphic and botanical sculptures that interconnect in a never-ending cycle of alteration, like a shapeshifting coral reef caught up in its own never-ending mutation. This show has no permanent images, no unchanging lines, and no insurmountable boundaries. Everything vibrates and quickens under the strain of an unavoidable inherent necessity: transformation.

Chrysalis is the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s primary project for 2023. It will comprise a special lineup of performance art, screenings, a special music program, and an online homage to Genesis P-Orridge, as well as sixty artists and over two hundred works, including loans from the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne. During the summer, a design show will take over the exhibition spaces, with works by Théophile Blandet and Audrey Large exploring the key ideas of Chrysalis via the lens of materiality. This project will be co-curated by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rain (BRH+).

Rounding out the exhibition, a richly illustrated bilingual catalogue (in French and English) published by Lenz Press will include an essay by Andrea Bellini and contributions by a number of curators, critics, artists, philosophers, and scholars on themes related to metamorphosis.

With works by: Paul Amar, Eleanor Antin, Marcel Bascoulard, Cecilia Bengolea, Marie Bouttier, Leigh Bowery, Genesis & Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, Marguerite Burnat-Provins, Monster Chetwynd, Eleni Christodoulou, Kirby Dick, Janko Domsic, Bob Flanagan, Faye Formisano, Nagi Gianni & ReveRso & Yotta Baka, Fergus Greer, Guo Fengyi, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Dunya Hirschter, Juliana Huxtable, Juliet Jacques, Davood Koochaki, Gabriel Kuri, Marie Losier, Ana Lupaş, Tomasz Machciński, Plinio Martelli, Jacopo Mazzetti, Pierre Molinier, Jota Mombaça, Ataa Oko, Luigi Ontani, Frida Orupabo, Ventura Profana, Agnes Questionmark, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Grisélidis Réal, André Romão, Rachel Rose, Mathilde Rosier, Sergio Sarri, Luigi Serafini, Cindy Sherman, Marianna Simnett, Sin Wai Kin, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Kiki Smith, Jenna Sutela, Kaari Upson, Raphaela Vogel, Pedro Wirz, Mayara Yamada & Ursulina de Lombardia, Anicka Yi, Anna Zemánková and Bruno Zhu.