Costa Vece, born in Switzerland in 1969 as the son of Italian-Greek parents, became well known at the latest with this participation at the Venice Biennale in 1999.
His works present questions on the possibility of homeland and cultural identity, attest to social exclusion and existential homelessness. With simple, found materials
and everyday objects, he builds inaccessible and barricaded sites that in part exclude the exhibition visitors and passersby, or give them that feeling. Like provisional
camps, these structures insert themselves into the space and show with their wall murals and slogans, flags and barbed wire a resistant image.
Telling for Costa Vece’s installations are their high degree of intensity, an almost indirect engagement with existential emotional questions, and a corresponding refraction
in their aesthetic. In his installations, he projects film sequences that leave a mark due to their intensity. He shows us worlds full of intimacy, memory, and longing,
but the social utopias suffer in his work shipwreck. Costa Vece develops apocalyptic visions of political violence and shows us the rejecting facades of political mise-en-scene.
In recent years his have been on view at Migros Museum, Zürich (2001), Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt (2004), Museion, Bozen (2007) and Kunsthaus Zürich (2008).
