Yurts

History of the work

On the park meadow between Freiburgstrasse and Effingerstrasse stand three yurts of different sizes. Of the nomads' tents, Thomas Huber shows only the trellis-like basic frame, made of steel. According to the Inselspital's leaflet, the largest yurt is empty and can serve as a meeting place; on its roof and sides glow neon ornaments that take up carpet patterns. The second contains twelve sheep and goats, while the smallest is filled with clay vessels and stays closed, as a storeroom. SIKART lists the materials as steel, neon, cast aluminium and ceramics.

The work came out of an art-and-architecture competition on the Inselspital site linked to the new building of the INO intensive care, emergency and operating centre; in 2012 the canton's Office for Property and Buildings published a book on the winning project 'Jurten'. According to Huber's own biography, the installation has been in place since October 2007. It first stood behind the outpatient wing at Freiburgstrasse 20; in 2018 it was moved to the new Inselpark. The leaflet describes how the yurts were set into the meadow there as 'follies' in the nineteenth-century sense, with new groups of trees guiding the view so that all three are never fully visible at once.

Huber was born in Zurich on 14 July 1955, the son of two architects. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, at the Royal College of Art in London and at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, where he was a master student of Fritz Schwegler. From 1992 to 1999 he taught as a professor in Braunschweig, and in 2013 he received the Prix Meret Oppenheim. He lives in Berlin and on the Italian shore of Lake Maggiore and is known above all as a painter who also speaks and writes about his pictures.

The leaflet reads the three tents as a reference to basic needs such as community, shelter and food, and as a counterpoint to the high-tech hospital. If you go close, you can count the animals in the second yurt.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Inselspital, Direktion Infrastruktur: Flyer Inselpark (2018) · SIKART: Thomas Huber, Jurten (Werkeintrag) · SIKART: Thomas Huber · Wikipedia (de): Thomas Huber (Künstler) · Thomas Huber: Biografie (PDF, Stand 2024) · swisscollections: Bern, Inselspital: INO … Kunst-Wettbewerb … Siegerprojekt „Jurten“ (2012) · Wikimedia Commons: Installation Jurten (Thomas Huber 2007)