marce norbert hörler
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As a political and poetic material, language bends, dissolves, condenses, sounds, and enters other materials. With song, poem, score, and inscription, marce composes multimodal dramaturgies across various media such as performance, installation and fragrance.
Language carries histories of repression and poetics in its structure and accumulated meanings. With a close attention to these sediments, their practice is interested in a vernacular rooted in place, time, material and sense. For marce, to tend to language philologically is to tend to the conditions under which meaning is made and unmade. The practice investigates how such forms carry resistance in themselves and how they become material for inhabitable poetics. Scent, voice, and touch push language open, both to reckon with what has happened and to compose with what is latent.
marce’s projects include cross-disciplinary collaborations with fellow artists as well as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers, perfumers, publishers, graphic designers. They include lean rüegg, martian m. mächler, Laurent Hermann Progin, Lucas Kramer, Pablo Giménez Arteaga, Nora Wyss, Hannah Mehler, Kari Leigh Rosenfeld.
Selected solo and group exhibitions and performances include Le Commun (CH, 2026), Kunsthaus Bregenz (AT, 2026), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (CH, 2025), M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art (LT, 2025), Stadtgalerie Bern (CH, 2025), Kunsthalle Basel (CH, 2024), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (DE, 2024), Kunstmuseum Appenzell (CH, 2023), Schloss Charlottenburg Berlin (DE, 2023), Kunsthaus Baselland (CH, 2023), Kasko Basel (CH, 2022), E-Werk Freiburg (DE, 2020), Silent Green Berlin (DE, 2019), W 139 Amsterdam (NL, 2019), Museo delle cere anatomiche Cagliari (IT, 2019), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH, 2019), Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society (CN, 2017), China Academy of Art Hangzhou (CN, 2017), Ausstellungsraum Klingenthal Basel (CH, 2016), WRO Media Art Biennial (PL, 2015), Teatr Academia Warsaw (PL, 2015).
Awards and nominations include Manor Art Prize (2025), Prix Mobilière (nom. 2025), Swiss Art Awards (nom. 2024), Pro Helvetia Research Grant (2024), Kunstkredit Basel Working Grant (2023), Young West (nom. 2023), Swiss Performance Art Award (nom. 2023), Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (nom. 2023), Innerrhoder Kunststiftung Working Grant (2021).
Residencies include Textile and Design Alliance (CH, 2024), Dogo Residenz für Neue Kunst (CH, 2024), Rupert (LT, 2023), Atelier Mondial (CN, 2017), artasfoundation(GE, 2016), artasfoundation (ABH, 2014).
Their work is part of collections such as Mobiliar Art Collection, Innerrhoder Kunststiftung, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA).
marce norbert hörler studied Comparative Historical Linguistics and Art History at University of Zurich (Zurich, CH) and holds a BA in Fine Arts from Institute Art Gender Nature (Basel, CH) and an MA in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute (Arnhem, NL).