Mats Staub
Switzerland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mats Staub is a traveller through the realms of memory. His long term projects grow incrementally from place to place. So, for example, he has interviewed over three hundred people in fourteen cities about what they know about their grandparents for the continually expanding audio installation «My Grandparents | Memory Bureau».

In the video installation «21 – Memories of Growing Up» he has created portraits of people from very different generations in the moment of recalling their experiences from when they were 21 years old. This installation also grows as it travels from city to city and is continually presented in new forms.

His long-term project, «Death and Birth in My Life» (since 2019), asks about existential experiences. It brings people together to talk to each other about their experiences of death and birth – until now conversations took place e.g. in Manchester, Kinshasa, Munich, Basel, Bamako and Paris. The Work was presented in Theatres and Museums, since 2021 also in private Livingrooms.

SHOWS

Death & Birth in My Life - 2019
21 - Memories of Growing Up - 2012 (Archive)

PRAISE FOR

Mats Staub
"I spent four hours in the exhibition, and I could have spent four more, it’s addictive."
The Guardian
“Mats Staub’s artistic projects take us on a journey to the four corners of the globe, inviting us to take time to listen and watch. Without recourse to facile spectacles, Mats Staub has, over the years, developed an exceptionally coherent poetry that gives us portraits of intense humanity. With refined delicacy and meticulous formal rigour, his works explore our most intimate and personal dimension, confronting us with the multi-layered complexity of our times.”
Swiss Theatre Award - Cristina Galbiati, jury member
"Mats Staub has turned an aptitude for human connection into a gentle yet highly revelatory artwork."
CityMag Adelaide