found branches, twine, burlap, paper, 2025
The Afterlife of the Tale is a thematic and material exploration of the legacy of folklore through time. Following the release of their book of translations and retellings of folklore from the Sarganserland, artists and writers Rachel TonThat and Tobias Bärtsch visually interpret motifs from their research in a collaborative installation.
In the literary theory of intertextuality, no single text stands alone—each is influenced by all that came before it. Even stories which are no longer told may lie dormant, embedded in cultural consciousness until they may be reborn. In her immersive installation, Rachel TonThat evokes this process as an organic one, branches of narrative in various stages of growth and decay. In these biological cycles, death is relative. Fallen trees, branches, and mast feed the growth of the next generation of green life.
Tobias Bärtsch’s wooden paintings and sculptures hold a palimpsest of marks, erasure, and repainting, an ongoing act of remaking where traces and imperfections become an aesthetic experience. In a piece resembling a confessional screen, the confessional experience mirrors the act of translation through partitions of interpretation and misunderstanding.