With On Disappearing, Eva Borner presents a site-specific installation created for Artspace Juraplatz in Biel/Bienne.

The artist has embossed into olive-oil soaps from Greece several key statements from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — among those most frequently violated around the world today. These include the right to life and liberty, the right to asylum, and the freedoms of thought, conscience and religion.

Combined with the material nature of the soaps, these fundamental principles generate a field of tension rich in associations. On the one hand, the use of soap evokes the image of rights gradually diluted, weakened and ultimately disappearing. On the other hand, it recalls expressions associated with innocence, responsibility and complicity, opening multiple layers of interpretation. The physical and sensory presence of the soaps invites reflection that extends beyond the text itself.

For its presentation at Juraplatz in Biel/Bienne, the installation has been reimagined as a serial geometric arrangement whose repetition creates a quiet yet striking visual structure. A carefully designed lighting concept causes the surfaces to glow with a golden radiance, particularly during the evening and night hours, transforming the work’s presence within the urban environment.

In the adjacent exhibition space, the theme is further developed and deepened through an additional installation conceived specifically for this presentation.

For the opening event, Markus Fischer (double bass), René Reimann (guitar) and Hans Peter Gutjahr (sound design) present a sound performance in front of the exhibition windows at Juraplatz. Through dense, frictional and constantly dissolving sound textures, they translate into acoustic form the fragility and gradual disappearance of the human rights articles inscribed into the soaps.