Esther Kempf (*1980, Bafut) spent the first four years of her life in Cameroon. There are photographs showing her and her siblings skipping about naked in the pouring summer rain.
Esther Kempf studied Fine Art and Scenography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In her artistic practice, she works in a site-specific, installation-based and experimental manner. She responds to the architectural structures, characteristics and histories of a place and combines these with long-term research. Her main focus lies on the use and imitation of natural phenomena, the unreliability of perception and the exploration of alternative forms of communication.
Her works are exhibited both locally and internationally, including in solo exhibitions at the National Trust of Georgia (Tbilisi), the One Night Stand Gallery (Sofia), Atelier Hermann Haller (Zurich), the Aargauer Kunsthaus (Aarau), the Institute for Modern Art (Nuremberg) and in group exhibitions at the Hochrhein Triennial (Kaiserstuhl & Hohentengen), the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial (Georgia), the International Sinop Biennial (Sinop, Turkey) and the Helmhaus Zurich.
She has received numerous awards, including the Canton of Zurich’s Visual Arts Grant (2010, 2012, 2023), a studio grant from the Binz39 Foundation (2009–2011), a prize from the Kiefer Hablitzel Foundation (2008) and the Dr Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation Prize (2008).
www.estherkempf.com