Manon (1940)
Switzerland

"Born as Rosmarie Küng in Bern and raised in St. Gallen. One year at arts and crafts school. Shortly afterwards she met the artist Sonja Sekula, with whom she then lived temporarily. Visit to the Zurich stage studio during the first marriage in the 1960s. Works as a graphic designer, decorator, stylist, fashion illustrator and photo model, for example for Balthasar Burkhard. By 1966 at the latest she appeared under the pseudonym Manon. In 1967 she met the artist Urs Lüthi, who became her second husband. Relations with the Zurich subculture as well as with the artists Esther Altorfer, Luciano Castelli, H. R. Giger, Jürgen Klauke, Walter Pfeiffer, Sigmar Polke, Markus Raetz. At the beginning of the 1970s, she opened the clothing store Manon's in Zurich's old town with unique, self-designed, vaudeville-style pieces. After separating from Lüthi, Manon exhibited the salmon-colored boudoir in the Li Tobler gallery in 1974. In 1975, spatial installations and performances could be seen in the Kunstmuseum Lucerne, in 1975–1976 in the Zurich Pablo Stähli Gallery, and in 1977 in the Kunsthaus Zurich. Between 1977 and 1980 she lived in Paris. Further solo exhibitions (selection): 1979 in the Galerie de Appel in Amsterdam; 1981 in the Düsseldorf Art Museum; 2008 Retrospective Manon – One Person in the Helmhaus Zurich and Swiss Institute, New York; 2011 in the Aargauer Kunsthaus; 2015 at the Center de la Photographie Geneva. Numerous group exhibitions such as 2008 at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Kunsthalle Wien. Interruption of exhibition activity from 1984 to 1989, which was resumed in 1990 with Artist Entrance at the St. Gallen Art Museum. Manon receives several scholarships from the city and the canton of Zurich; 1975 Kiefer Hablitzel scholarship for the book Manonomania (unpublished); 1980 Federal Art Scholarship; Studio stays in New York (1982), Rome (1994) and Genoa (1995–1996); 2008 Prix Meret Oppenheim; 2013 Grand Culture Prize from the St. Gallen Cultural Foundation. Manon lives and works in Zurich.

Shortly before her first appearance as an artist, Manon was already experimenting with photography (Polaroids; Fetish Pictures, 1973–1974). As a bedroom, she presented the lush, sensual room installation The Salmon-colored Boudoir in 1974, which was preceded by the salmon-colored walls of the Manon's shop. From the very beginning, Manon's work has been shaped by the influence of the glossy magazine - the coded language of commercially staged photography - and the connection between art and life. The pseudonym Manon already embodies the latter as a fictional character and person. The ambivalence of staging and exhibitionism forms a basic strategy; This is also the case in The End of Lola Montez, where the masked artist, chained in a cage, fixates the audience (1975). In Zurich's Höngg district, she replaces the display of a former butcher's shop with seven young men (Manon presents men, 1976). For a year she “documented” her life in a showcase, using photo story-based methods that completely fictionalized the private aspects (Life in the Showcase, 1975–1976). By this point, the identity of her fictional character had become so established that in 1977 the artist felt it was necessary to destroy her. By multiplying “Manon” through 16 young women and a doll with a plaster mask, the performance The artist is present marks the end point of the first creative phase.

Several photo series were created in Paris at the end of the 1970s. La dame au crâne rasé shows a woman with a shaved head (1977–1978) in stylized and eroticized poses, which is reminiscent of the androgynous artist Claude Cahun. The shift in focus from performance to photography goes hand in hand with an expanded spectrum of personae, which Manon himself portrays or increasingly stages through objects. Various alter egos appear in the photographs of The Gray Wall or 36 Sleepless Nights (1979); In the Ball of Solitudes (1980), the artist embodies 37 “female forms of existence,” according to Manon. Each figure is photographed frontally and sits on the same sofa, giving the series formal rigor. The works created after 1989 are also influenced by the cool and formalized eroticism of the 1970s. In the 1990s, Manon also devoted himself to the theme of transience. The Women's Room (1990) uses labeled caskets to refer to works by 18 important women that were marginalized in the 20th century. She uses her own body to depict the topic of aging in many different ways in the photo series Once She Was Miss Rimini (2003); In the dilapidated architecture of Hotel Dolores (2008–2011), the artist arranges images, objects and herself as an extra to create ambiguous tableaux.

Today, an interest in historical feminist positions can be observed, which Manon demonstrates primarily through his photographic self-stagings alongside artists such as Valie Export and Lynda Benga."
(Source, website, SIK)

Work :

• La dame au crâne rasé (1978)