The man dressed to avoid recognition: a dark coat swollen over a fleece-lined sweatshirt. The silhouette formed by their combination abstracts his own. If he were to pass an acquaintance, familiarity wouldn’t register. He could move through the city anonymously, and those whose paths he crossed would feel themselves so too. In this manner of procession, proximity lost significance; nearness was rendered a dead metric. Owing to his sparse interactions, the man developed a heightened sensitivity to noise, to light, to gesture, to sensation. He walked slowly, allowing time for each minute detail to register.
- from Any volume of light is also a cathedral: a demarcation of space with unspecified, yet limitless, contents

Camille Clair, 2026

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Jonida Laçi is interested in the conditions under which things become visible and take form. The production and reception processes of moving image and sculpture provide the frame of reference for her practice, which extends across various media, continually renegotiating what an image, an object, or a material can do.
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„They trenched“ brings together various approaches and affinities: alongside a collaboration developed last year with the artist Valentina Triet and a series of sculptures that Jonida Laçi has regularly revisited since 2022, she invited the artist and writer Camille Clair to contribute a text that accompanies the exhibition. It will be published in English and in a German translation by Lea Vajda.
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Jonida Laçi (born 1990 in Durrës, Albania) lives and works in Vienna. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Can, Vienna (2023), and marais/moeras, Brussels (2025), as well as in duo exhibitions at Courtney Jaeger, Basel; Kunsthalle Wien (both 2025); and Solutions!, Milan (2026). She has also participated in group exhibitions at Forde, Geneva; Shellspace; OxfordBerlin/Linienstrasse, Düsseldorf (all 2025); Fondation Tschuess, Karlsruhe; and Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Tyrol (both 2022). Laçi studied Object Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and received the Kunsthalle Wien Preis in 2025.

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Jonida Laçi
Camille Clair