MATZA Production is a Swiss art lab founded by Anja Wyden Guelpa and Séverin Guelpa. We are pleased to partner with them for our experimental art programs in all of our 7 cities.
Anja has more than 20 years of experience in key management positions both in the private and in the public sector. In 2018, she created civicLab, where she works with her team to advise organizations and managers on innovation and corporate culture, using art, nature and movement for meaningful change.
Séverin is an artist and curator who mainly works on site-specific projects, most of the time related to social, political or ecological issues. Anja and Séverin started to work together a few years ago by founding and organizing the Uncover workshops in the Swiss Alps. With MATZA x Edgelands, they join their forces, expertises and values on a new, exciting and ambitious project.
MATZA is a manifesto that takes the shape of residencies, exhibitions and workshops that aim to use art to address current social and environmental issues. It is based on a principle of collective dynamics, experimentation and immersion in emblematic territories.
As a true forerunner of the popular petition and political participation, the matze is a tree trunk that was torn down and dragged from village to village in the Upper Valais (Switzerland) from the end of the fifteenth century, in order to mobilize the local populace around a common cause. If they were in agreement, the locals then planted a nail in the trunk as a sign of solidarity with the cause.
We are going through a period of upheaval due to a succession of political, social, economic and ecological crises. In the complexity of analysis and the absence of answers to these profound planetary transformations, art must play a determining role because it knows how to anticipate, feel the fragility and experiment where other disciplines struggle to question themselves. By seeking for sparks of necessary change in the territorial margins and places under threat, MATZA makes the bet that an implied art, moved by collective dynamics and a close contact with the world which surrounds it, can contribute to change in our society.
Over the course of 7 years, five sites have been investigated around the world. At each time, MATZA gathers communities of artists, scientists and experts to work together on issues related to the specific context of the site. To date, MATZA has been present in the Mojave desert of the United States, on the Aletsch glacier in Switzerland, on the Kerkennah islands of Tunisia and in several cities in Switzerland.
(Images in order of appearance)
Matza Aletsch (Switzerland) - 2016-18 (https://matza.net/tag/aletsch/)
Matza Amboy (USA) - 2015-17 (https://matza.net/tag/amboy/)