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Marye Toxopeus (Toxopencil) during her residency at Institut le Rosey, Gstaad, Switzerland

Residency at Institut le Rosey

The Teeth of the Mountain

From August 2021 until July 2023 I was the Artist in Residence at international school Institut le Rosey, in Switzerland. At Le Rosey, during the winter-term we would move to Gstaad, a ski-resort for the ultra-rich. Here I created a project based on mountain tops that were named after body parts (e.g., teeth, fingers), and so I became interested in the personification of the landscape. Sculptures are dotted around Gstaad, many of mirrored materials (e.g., Helidon Xhixha, Doug Aitken), reflecting the picturesque surroundings. However, the warped mirrored surfaces show a slightly different world, with a skewed perspective. Stand close enough and you see yourself, contorted against the mountain backdrop. This gave me the idea of wanting to transform the self into a landscape. I took photos with mirrored paper to see how I could distort my body. This project led me to explore the feeling of being at one with nature, I made drawings where my body is a mountain range or part of Lake Geneva. On the other hand, these drawings were inspired by the feeling of looking into a world that does not belong to me. As an observing outsider.

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