Art Taaalkssss: Mara Züst

A task from Doris Stauffer’s Hexenkurs, 1977

For Art Taaalkssss, artist Mara Züst (born in Zürich, where she lives and works) discusses the work and legacy of Doris Stauffer (1934 – 2017).

Doris Stauffer was a leading figure in feminist art activism in Switzerland in the 1970s. She trained in photography at the Zurich School of Applied Arts in the 1950s, and soon afterwards began experimenting with assemblages. From the 1960s onwards, she became involved in the women’s liberation movement (FBB), and in 1971, she co-founded the experimental art school F+F in Zurich. From 1980 onwards she began giving her famous Hexenkurse, classes that involved radical feminist pedagogic methodologies.

The work of artist, art mediator and author Mara Züst has been drawing inspiration from Doris Stauffer’s playful and critical approach. In 2015, she edited Doris Stauffer: A Monograph published by Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, sparking a renewed interest in the work and life of Doris Stauffer, who was awarded the prize for cultural merit by the city of Zurich the same year.

Currently, together with Simone Koller and Esther Schena, Mara Züst is working on a publication that will provide an overview of Doris Stauffer’s entire pedagogic work, while carrying out thematic workshops with three feminist collectives from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Switzerland / China / Turkey to discuss and expand Stauffer’s legacy.