Age, animal welfare, spirituality, love and intimacy for people with and without disabilities – these are the themes melanie bonajo (they/them) explores in their experimental documentary films and colourful video installations. In keeping with the appealing visual language of the films, bonajo and Théo Demans create unique environments: viewers find themselves sometimes on a richly detailed giant cushion in the middle of an otherworldly landscape, sometimes on wheelchairs in a spaceship-like setting.

In the exhibition ‘Echo Organs,’ bonajo gives a strong and confident voice to people who are otherwise less clearly heard. For ‘Schule der Liebenden’, for example, a project developed with Daniel Cremer and Yanna Rüger, these are people with cognitive impairments, actors from the ensemble of the Zurich Theater HORA. They talk about (self-)love, mindfulness, touch and all other facets of intimacy. Equally enlightening and affecting is the encounter with the elderly people in the film ‘progress vs. regress’. Here, bonajo opens up the protagonists' knowledgeable and often surprising perspectives on the social changes brought about by the technological innovations of recent decades.

Without moralising, but in an approachable, playful and humorous way, bonajo radically dissects the big questions of our time and implicitly calls for more respect and a more loving approach to nature, animals and the environment, to other people and, last but not least, to our own bodies and our own boundaries.

Fig.: Schule der Liebenden, 2024, film still, Courtesy of the artist and AKINCI