Noemi Pfister at Graubünden Museum of Art

Noemi Pfister (*1991) is the winner of the Manor Art Prize 2025 Graubünden and on this occasion she is presenting her largest solo exhibition to date. In her new paintings, created especially for this show at the Bündner Kunstmuseum, the artist combines motifs from art history with elements of popular culture. She symbolically weaves themes such as youth, digitality, ecology and the human form into multilayered narratives. Her dreamlike landscapes are inhabited by enigmatic figures that seem to belong to a parallel world. Their anatomies appear distorted – they linger on a terrace, squinting into the sun; they perform gymnastic movements that are more play than exercise or they drink energy drinks in a fight against exhaustion. The visual language at times echoes the compositions of Old Master paintings, yet their clothing, postures, and props reflect today’s youth culture. By intertwining the familiar with the uncanny, her works probe the kinds of communities we might inhabit in the future.

A richly illustrated publication, Noemi Pfister. Heart on Sleeve, will accompany the exhibition. It includes texts by Raphael Gygax, Damian Jurt, and Valerie Keller. The exhibition is curated by Damian Jurt.

Noemi Pfister (b. 1991) grew up in Locarno. Since 2018 she has lived and worked in Basel. In 2017 she completed her Bachelor in Fine Arts at the Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD) in Geneva. One year after beginning the Work.Master program there, she decided to move to Basel, where she received her Master in Fine Arts in 2019 at the Institute Art Gender Nature of the Academy of Art and Design. In the same year, Noemi Pfister co-founded Palazzina, an exhibition space and an artists’ house, which in 2024 received the Culture Prize of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft. Since 2018, Pfister has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad, including at Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthaus Baselland, Kunstverein Freiburg im Breisgau, and Kunsthaus Langenthal. In 2021 Pfister was awarded a grant from the Basel-Stadt Kunstkredit. In 2022 she was Artist in Residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and in 2023 she was nominated for the Swiss Art Award.

The Manor Art Prize, one of the most important awards for contemporary art in Switzerland, was established in 1982 by Philippe Nordmann to provide young artists with a platform. Each year, a jury of experts awards the prize in six Swiss cities, alternating every two years between Aarau, Basel, Biel, Chur, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Lugano, Schaffhausen, Sion, St. Gallen, and Winterthur. The prize has already supported a whole series of artists on their way to international recognition.