Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, December 3, 2025 : Ingrid Bachmann, a Canadian contemporary artist (#2434)

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Artist of the Day, December 3, 2025 : Ingrid Bachmann, a Canadian contemporary artist (#2434)

Ingrid Bachmann (1958) is a Canadian contemporary artist based in Montreal known mostly for her interactive kinetic sculptures that mix technology and ordinary everyday objects. Her work has been exhibited throughout Canada, and internationally in the United States, Peru, Brazil, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, Australia and Cuba. Exhibitions include the 11th Havana Biennial (Cuba), the Quebec Biennial, Manifestation d’art International 6 (Canada), Flesh of the World (Canada), Command Z: Artists Exploring Phenomena and Technology (USA), and Lab 30 (Germany).

Ingrid Bachmann is known for her multidisciplinary installation works, drawing from the fields of textiles, sculpture and kinetic art. Her work frequently incorporates technology. But as J.R. Carpenter points out: "Much of Bachmann’s work with technology has been aimed at demystifying it, humanizing it, stripping it down to its essentials, and then hanging stories on those bare bones. She has used bits of yarn to map the internet’s under-sea cables, harnessed the computer loom to 'print' seismic activity, offered giant knitting needles as a user-computer interface."

Symphony for 54 Shoes (Distant Echoes) "is a kinetic artwork that involves 27 pairs of shoes collected from a variety of second hand and thrift stores. Each shoe has a toe and heel tap used in tap dancing attached to it. The shoes move or dance independently of each other. The mechanical motion of tapping is created using solenoids (tubular magnetic sensors) that move up and down when activated by a switch. Each switch, 52 in total, is controlled by a microcontroller and software that activates the sequence of the tapping of the shoes."

Pelt (Bestiary) – "I have often had the sense that technology is naked, that it has drifted from its animal roots. In Pelt (Bestiary), I want to give digital technology back its fur: to bring the bestial and the messiness of the world back into the realm of digital technology and to continue my work in grounding the digital experience in the material realm and to rethink the human//machine/animal divides. Pelt (Bestiary) is a series of six kinetic and interactive sculptures and five large format drawings that serve as portraits of the beasts. Each piece has its own character and behaviour - some respond to human presence, others move of their own accord."

Portable Sublime – In this installation Ingrid Bachmann uses suitcases to let viewers enter "spaces of provisional wonder. Various events occur when the suitcases are opened. Each suitcase is its own small-scale installation with its own narrative."

Pinocchio’s Dilemma explores the "uneasy relationship between the telling of stories and the telling of lies. I am interested in the stories we tell, as individuals and as cultures, and the intersection between lies and stories, fact and fiction. Components include a growing nose and a series of wagging jewel-like tongues."
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