IN HER writings, Swiss artist Heidi Bucher would talk about looking at the interiors of a room, touching the items and observing them and wrapping them in gauze, all an act of “listening carefully.” Human interiority as seen in fabric, clothing, and physical space is the crux of “And pull yesterday into today,” a selection of Ms. Bucher’s oeuvre on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) in Manila.
In collaboration with the Estate of Heidi Bucher, her textiles, “skinnings,” sketches, and wearable body sculptures were either flown in or reproduced by MCAD for the exhibition. “She was trained as a dressmaker and went to an arts and crafts school in Zurich that was much like Benilde, where she learned textile design and fashion. She worked with fabric and the human body at a point when minimalism and conceptualism were at their height, so she was a late discovery because her work was so female and so outside of what was happening at that moment that she was never looked at properly,” said Joselina Cruz, director and curator of MCAD.
Ms. Bucher’s practice, spanning the 1960s to the ’80s, encompassed drawings, sculptures, installations, architecture, and collaborative performances, resisting the categorization of artistic disciplines. “It’s a perfect anchor for the Benilde Open Design and Art (grants exhibit), which thematically explores the curious mindset in celebration of the college’s 35 th anniversary,” Ms.
Cruz said. “There.
