18 Questions With...
Paulo Wirz

Growing up beside a cemetery meant that death was never an abstract idea but part of my everyday landscape from a very early stage of life. On one side was the cemetery, on the other an empty lot, and in between stood the house where I grew up, filled with personal memorabilia from my Swiss and Egyptian Lebanese family ancestors. These three spaces, the cemetery, the vacant lot, and the house, shaped my first understanding of the urban environment. The house was a temple of memories of people I had never met. The cemetery was a place that collectively ritualized individual death. The vacant lot was an undefined space where children, including my friends and me, played, but also where syncretic religious practices such as offerings and sacrifices took place.

Together, these spaces, both physical and symbolic, introduced me to the concepts and symbolism of death, memory, material value, and attachment. Over time, this intersection of themes became the foundation of my artistic research, echoing Edgar Morin’s idea that culture, the collective heritage of knowledge, has meaning only because generations die and their knowledge must be transmitted. In this sense, society does not function despite death but is propelled by it.

Whether I am blending worlds or not, I am not sure. What I do know is that I come from a “blended world” myself, so I believe that different axes of reference converge in my work naturally. Pindamonhangaba, the city where I grew up in the Paraíba Valley, is a place where Afro-Brazilian and Tupi-Guarani traditions still endure, expressed through folkloric, mythological, religious, and legendary narratives, as well as through forms of practical knowledge embedded in the cultural fabric of “Pinda.”

My multicultural family background within this specific context also brought diverse references to my upbringing. I left Pinda just before turning 18, and I am now 35. Next year, I will have lived exactly half of my life in Brazil and half in Switzerland. In that sense, perhaps these two worlds are still blending.

I cannot really say how these cultures meet in my work, but as I mentioned above, I believe it is something that happens constantly and naturally.

I am very interested in animistic practices in general, and in how, during specific periods of history and within particular cultures, our relationship with so-called “inanimate objects,” whether from nature or created by human hands, has taken on a religious dimension.The ways our species relates to objects, animates them, believes in them, and even obeys them, fascinates and inspires me. This perspective directly informs my work, where I often use everyday materials and symbolic objects in ways that echo these animistic traditions, inviting viewers to perceive them not just as static things, but as carriers of meaning, memory, and presence.

Currently, I am a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille Université (Iméra) in collaboration with the Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem). My research project explores the intangible power and symbolism of amulets and talismans, which I approach as “ancestral spiritual technologies of resistance.” Their capacities for protection and coercion have led me to the following questions: Does protection imply aggression? Does the threat of force become a condition of safety? Does preparedness make aggression inevitable? These themes, and questions, together with the natural and historical environment of Marseille, are what currently inspire me.

During my time in Marseille, I will be focusing on Egyptian paste, a self-glazing ceramic body that originated in ancient Egypt over 4,000 years ago. I first encountered this technique during my time in Cairo and learned that it was primarily used for ritual and religious purposes. It also entered daily life in the form of jewelry, vessels, and decorative objects. Even in those "ordinary" uses, it carried protective and symbolic functions, so its meaning was never purely practical. This technique is closely connected to Egyptian culture and was often used in the making of talismans and amulets. Many objects made with it also circulated across the Mediterranean through trade and diplomacy, including in Marseille. I do not expect to fully master this material, but I am glad to be able to experiment with it and work closely with it throughout my residency.

Indeed, during my previous residency in Bucharest, I read quite a lot from Romanian thinkers such as Mircea Eliade (no longer considered an unquestioned authority in his field, though still the author of many interesting texts) and Emil Cioran, whose writings were instrumental in shaping the critical thinking behind my last solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Arbon. To be honest, however, I do not have any object at home that feels “sacred” to me, because I do not really believe in the sacred as such. What interests me more is the phenomenon of the sacred: the question of why we assign so much importance to certain things that they come to be regarded, individually or collectively, as sacred. From my point of view, no material thing can truly be sacred, since all objects are ultimately, and simply, inventions of our species. I would say that what feels sacred to me are not objects but personal relationships.

Wax. It was the first material I ever used, and it is still very present in my work.

There are many materials I want to try, but right now I am especially eager to integrate the technique of glass casting into my work. Glass has been part of my practice since the beginning of my BA studies, whether through ready-made objects, blown elements, glass sheets, or mirrors, and it has always carried a symbolic weight within my installations.

Like bronze, glass casts embody solidity and permanence, yet they open up possibilities that bronze cannot. Transparency and the potential to shatter create a tension between fragility and strength, ephemerality and endurance. This duality is what I want to explore further.

For me, glass casting gives form to transparency itself, almost like a ghostly presence. It is both poetic and conceptual, allowing me to further reflect on absence and presence, vulnerability and resilience, the visible and the invisible.

Kunsthalle Arbon in Switzerland, where I had my first institutional solo exhibition. Its 650 m² hangar-like space, dedicated to site-specific projects, pushed me beyond the white cube and became a place where I learned, experimented, and also panicked, the most.

Every place has its own knowledge and specialties, and I feel truly grateful to the persons and institutions that have offered me the chance to carry out projects in so many different countries over the past years. Each experience has been both personally and professionally cathartic. If I had to choose one, I would say that my stay in Cairo was one of the most important for my work so far. It was there that I began working with glass blowing and bronze for the first time, which opened up an entirely new spectrum within my practice. My field trips around the country, where I researched topics related to the technical processes of mummification, ancient Egyptian board games, and mythological narratives about immortality and the afterlife, were crucial for the development of my critical thinking and the expansion of my formal vocabulary. During this time, I also had the chance to experiment with materials such as sand, stone, bitumen, linen gauze, and oil. I not only learned a great deal but also made many friends.

I am not sure if it is my favorite city, but the one that has most marked my mind is, without a doubt, the place where I come from: Pindamonhangaba. I left “Pinda”, to Switzerland, a few months before turning 18. It was there that my curiosity about the world was first sparked, shaping both my spirit and imagination, permeating my unconscious and oneiric world. It was, at once, a place where nothing happened and yet everything happened. And of course, its wonderfully and generously long name is still my favorite detail. In the Indigenous Tupi-Guarani language, it means “the place where hooks are made.”

As a kid, I was always fascinated by the game cat’s cradle, in which two or more people play with a string looped around their hands. What I like about the game is that, unlike most others, there is no winner or loser. It is about creating “images” with the hands and the string. The act of playing the game itself feels like casting a spell or speaking a secret language. I clearly recall children at school playing with a red cotton thread in this almost magical hand choreography. Not surprisingly, hand casts are also something very present in my work. This ambiguity between "player and prayer", which the historian Johan Huizinga elaborates on in his book Homo Ludens, is something that often appears in my practice.

Beyond this personal memory, the thread itself is an archetypal symbol in many mythological narratives across different cultures, often associated with life and death, protection and danger, as well as guidance and disorientation. I am also very interested in what one can do with threads, such as attaching things to each other, making knots, weaving patterns, or wrapping and binding objects. These gestures often carry ritualistic significance and become ways of connecting, protecting, or transforming.

I am not sure if it is “home” or “the domestic.” Even though they are closely related, they still differ. I draw a lot on domestic forms such as furniture and fixtures, beds, wardrobes, and shelves, but also windows and doors. The System of Objects (Jean Baudrillard), Man and His Symbols (C. G. Jung), and The Poetics of Space (Gaston Bachelard) are books I have greatly enjoyed reading, and they have deeply influenced my thinking about the symbolic dimensions of domestic environments. I am less interested in the idea of living in a home than in how the home inhabits us, and how furniture and fixtures can carry and transmit knowledge.

In my solo presentation at Kunsthalle Arbon, the idea of home was less explicit in domestic forms. It was the first time I worked with floor plans, creating one composed mostly of readymade objects combined with self-created ones. In form, I drew on references to archaeological excavations of burial sites, labyrinths, and the floor plans of houses that I lived in the past. The exhibition’s title adds further layers of meaning: Dormitório is both a bedroom and a dormitory. In antiquity, cemeteries were also referred to in this way. The Ancient Greek word Koimeterion, from which the word “cemetery” is derived in many languages, essentially means “a sleeping place.” The cemetery, the sleeping place, the house, and the ruin intertwine in the work, revealing porous boundaries between inhabiting, remembering, and impermanence.

Working with large and complex installations brings significant logistical challenges, such as transport and storage, the eternal nemesis of every artist. Still, I love working on a larger scale, as it allows me to articulate materials and forms in ways that create more complex and layered narratives. I am currently preparing for a solo exhibition that will open next year at the Kunstraum Engländerbau in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, a spacious venue with around 350 m² of floor area and 250 m² of wall surface. It is a generous space, and I am very excited to develop an entirely new body of work for this exhibition.

Nevertheless, I believe it does not ultimately matter whether I am working on a large or small scale. The greatest challenge is the profession of being an artist itself and the precarity that comes with it. Not being paid fairly, not being acknowledged as a serious profession, not having stability, not having access to proper working space, not being able to plan for the future, and not being protected by fair labor rights. The list of “nots” is long, and I could continue for a while.

The other day, I told someone I had just met here in Marseille that I am an artist. They replied, “Oh, I do not even know how that works, making a living out of it.” And honestly, I am still figuring it out, day by day.

Photography was a crucial element in my transition toward sculpture and installation during my BA studies in Lausanne, Amsterdam, and finally Zürich. I still practice photography, even if I do not often have the opportunity to show it. It has remained an integral part of my work since those early years. Because most of my installations and sculptures are ephemeral, photography became an important tool not only for documentation but also for offering new perspectives and temporalities. I do not see these photographs as mere records of past works but as new works that emerge from them.

During my fellowship at the Collegium Helveticum at ETH Zürich from 2023 to 2024, I developed my first audiovisual work. It was then that I realized the true value of my training in photography. Since that time, I have been working increasingly with video and 16mm film, and I look forward to presenting this material in the future together with my installation and sculptural practice.

That I should stop doing art. But this advice came when I was still studying, so maybe it does not really count as advice “as an artist.” After receiving my diploma and officially becoming "an artist", the worst advice I got was that I should go to all openings and talk to people. I do go to openings and I know how important such events are, but going to an opening just for the sake of networking feels pointless. Another bad advice was to make Instagram, which only made me chemically dependent on memes and reels.

To not throw water on hot wax, it literally explodes like a bomb :)

When I was 17, I enrolled in the biology program at the University of Taubaté, near my hometown. At the time, my plan was to become a marine biologist in Ubatuba and work with "Projeto Tamar", a NGO dedicated to saving sea turtles.

I still think about it every now and then, and who knows what the future holds? Working outdoors, in nature, and with animals is definitely still a dream job of mine. But I am very happy doing what I do now, and my plan is to continue with it and hopefully also work in art education at the university level at some point. I had the chance to do this from 2020 to 2023 at the University of the Arts in Zürich, and I really enjoyed it. In my view, working in education is one of the most important and noble professions in our society. If things change and I end up doing something completely different from what I do now, I can easily imagine myself in a pizzeria or a gelateria.

(I have already spotted a few here in Marseille)