Sasha Huber (b. 1975) is a Helsinki-based internationally recognised visual artist-researcher of Swiss-Haitian heritage. Huber's work is concerned with the politics of memory, care and belonging in relation to colonial residues left in the environment. Connecting history and the present, she uses and responds to archival material within a layered creative practice that encompasses performance-based reparative interventions, video, photography, and collaborations. Huber also usurps the staple gun, aware of its symbolic significance as a weapon, while offering the potential to renegotiate unequal power dynamics and the possibility of repair, symbolically stitching wounds together (pain-things). Known for her artistic research contribution to the “Demounting Louis Agassiz” campaign, she is aiming at reassessing the glaciologist’s contentious racist heritage. She holds an MA in visual culture from Aalto University in Helsinki and is presently undertaking a practice-based PhD in artistic research at Zurich University of the Arts. Huber also works in a creative partnership with artist Petri Saarikko. Together they have initiated the long-term project Remedies Universe (since 2011) which explores aural family-knowledge in different geographical and cultural contexts and been invited to artist residencies around the world. In 2018 Huber was the recipient of a State Art Award from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland. In 2021–2024 her work is touring under the title “You Name It”, produced by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and Autograph in London. A comprehensive book with the same title was published by Mousse Publishing in November 2022.

Long biography on SIK-ISEA

Sasha Huber grew up in Eglisau. Following in the footsteps of her maternal grandfather, a self-taught artist who co-founded an art centre in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) in 1944, Sasha Huber first pursued a career as a graphic designer and then as an artist. Preparatory course at the School of Design in Zurich, followed by a bachelor’s degree in graphic design (1991–1996) and a Master’s degree in Visual Culture at the Aalto University in Helsinki (2002–2006). From 2017, PhD project in artistic research at Zurich University of the Arts and the University of Arts Linz. Huber has lived in Helsinki since 2002; she collaborates regularly with her partner Petri Saarikko, with whom, from 2010, she has developed the Remedies Universe project and explored self-help methods and medical healing in a variety of geographical and cultural contexts.

Individual exhibitions (selection): Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (Netherlands), 2021; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (Canada), 2022; Autograph, London (United Kingdom), 2022; Turku Art Museum, Turku (Finland) (2023). Group exhibitions (selection): Biennales of São Paolo (2010), Sydney (2014), Venice (2015), Helsinki (2023); Aargauer Kunsthaus (2023); Kunsthaus Zürich (2024); Ferme-Asile, Sion (2024). Awards: 2018, State Art Prize, Finland; 2022–2026, Artist’s Grant from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Sasha Huber’s work is characterised, among other things, by the technique of stapling, which she has employed since 2004. In her frequently serial works, the artist replaces the brush with a staple gun and the canvas with a wooden or acoustic board. Huber employs this technique, originally conceived as an act of return fire (Shooting Back, 2004) as a way of symbolically closing the wounds caused by colonialism and restoring the dignity of those dehumanised by slavery by presenting them in an individualised manner (Tailoring Freedom, 2021–2023). The artist also works with the staple gun in her portraiture – a recurring genre in her work: writer James Baldwin, who was one of the first black people to visit the Valais village of Leukerbad, or Swiss politician Tilo Frey, who was the first female person of colour to be elected to the National Council in 1971, are portrayed in the series entitled The Firsts, which Huber began in 2017. These works lend people of the African diaspora new visibility and, by means of the acoustic panels, symbolically reclaim the voice that history has denied them.

The activist dimension in Huber’s work was sparked by the book Reise in Schwarz-Weiss (Journey in Black and White, 2005) by Swiss historian and activist Hans Fässler. Since 2007, the pair have collaborated on the Demounting Louis Agassiz campaign, which critically reflects on the legacy of Louis Agassiz (1807–1873). After emigrating to the United States, the Swiss glaciologist and naturalist became a prominent advocate of racial segregation and white supremacy. In the video Rentyhorn (2008), the artist carries a metal plaque to the top of the mountain named after Agassiz – the Agassizhorn – thus taking the first step towards renaming the peak the Rentyhorn in tribute to Renty (1775– after 1866), a slave whom Agassiz had photographed in the context of his racial theory. With videos, photographs, archive material and worldwide interventions, Huber reacts to the more than 80 places on earth, the moon and Mars that bear the name Agassiz. In the video entitled Tlingit Glacier & Lakes – A Reparative Intervention (2024), the artist links the theme of Agassiz with that of reparation: together with Khaách Jeremiah James, a hunter, fisherman and traditional artisan, Huber travels to the Agassiz Glacier in Alaska, which lies on indigenous territory. They collect glacier water for a ceremony at which the glacier will be renamed. The event will be held on Jeremiah’s ancestral land. Huber's work is based on a reality by which she herself is affected: the artist draws on her Swiss-Haitian origins as a way of calling attention to the violence suffered by some of her ancestors as a result of abduction and enslavement between Africa and Haiti, which still manifests itself today in the form of racism and discrimination. Huber thus places her art at the service of decolonising knowledge, making reparations for history, and a progressive healing process.

Works in institutional collections (selection): Aarau, Aargauer Kunsthaus; Helsinki (Finland), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art; Helsinki (Finland), Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection; Kopavogur (Iceland), Kopavogur Art Museum; Sion, Kunstmuseum Wallis; Tumba (Sweden), Botkyrka Konsthall; Zurich, Kunsthaus Zürich.

Written by Céline Eidenbenz, 2024
Translation: Toby Alleyne-Gee

Citation guideline: 
Céline Eidenbenz: “Sasha Huber.” In SIKART Lexicon on art in Switzerland, 2024.