We are Piera Buchli and Luc Isenschmid. We work individually and as the art duo Buchli/Isenschmid. For five years, we have been living with Gabriel, David, Clémence and Lydia in a large, old stone house at the entrance to the Safiental valley. In 2022, the Versam Art Collective and the Versam Art Residency were established. This led to the opening of the Versam Art Garage as a place with an external impact.
We are very fortunate to be able to work in this place. It combines many things that enable focused artistic practice: peacefulness and quietness, lots of space, room for workshops, time for research and a landscape on the doorstep that invites you to pause and reflect. The valley and its inhabitants become a space for resonance. It shapes our work, challenges us and opens up new perspectives.
This personal experience resulted in the residency program. We do not see it as a rigid format, but rather as an open, changeable structure that is constantly evolving like an artistic process. Every person present changes the form, every encounter leaves its mark. The focus does not lay on the production of a finished piece of art but on the exploration of ideas, experimentation, the deepening of research processes and the reorganisation of structures.
The Versam Art Garage is a studio, stage and meeting place all in one. It opens up to the outside, for conversations with people from the village, for spontaneous insights into ongoing work, it carries formats that develop on the spot. We invite artists who are willing to rethink projects, draw new connections and have a dialogue with the location and its surroundings.
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