Moonlight Farmers

Mariana Murcia

Jacob Ott

Johannes Willi

A “moonlight farmer,” or “Mondscheinbauer” in German, is an individual who, often due to financial constraints, can only tend to their own farms and fields during the evening or at night. They spend their daytime hours working for larger farms or other companies to make a living and to support and sustain their smaller farms.

Mariana Murcia, Johannes Willi, and Jacob Ott constitute a group of three artists, each with distinct artistic practices that intersect through continuous collaborations and daily conversations that take place within the context of their shared living arrangements.

These intersections between their diverse artworks, perspectives, and approaches in the production of their art play a central role in the group exhibition “Moonlight Farmers.” The act of living together becomes an integral part of their artistic work. The exhibition showcases individual works by the three artists, each interconnected yet able to stand on its own, influenced by one another.

The gallery’s bookstore undergoes a transformation into a dynamic live publication, serving as a platform for social experimentation and communal living. This setup generates an undefined tension between the concepts of publication and performance, as well as between the beauty and significance of collective ideologies and the efficiency and brilliance of egocentric endeavors.

Mariana Murcia (b. 1988, Bogotá), currently residing and working in Basel, embodies an indisciplinary approach within her artistic practice, blurring the lines between art production and art education. Operating from the dynamic boundary between the two realms, she takes on a performative stance to explore the emergence of language from the fusion of materiality and physical memory. Her work involves embodied experiences within the environment, allowing her to speculate about the origins of the technologies we employ for communication.

In 2021, she completed her MFA at the Institut Kunst, FHNW in Basel and is presently pursuing the Experimental Design MA program at the same institution. Her recent exhibitions include showcases at Kunsthalle Basel, Palazzina, Amore, and Radius CCA (NL). Mariana Murcia also boasts significant experience in collective work and collaborative processes through her involvement with Escuela de Garaje, an artist-led platform dedicated to art projects and unstructured education. She has been a Program Director at LungA School in Iceland since 2020.

Jacob Ott (b. 1992, Dorfen, Germany) is currently based in Basel and has undertaken studies in art at HKDM Freiburg, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, and the Institut Kunst in Basel. His work spans various media, encompassing sculpture, objects, painting, installations, film, sound, and performance. Jacob Ott’s artistic expression revolves around an exploration of the customs and symbols that shape social structures and artistic institutions. Much of his work delves into the fundamental aspects of art production and the individual components and infrastructures of the art world itself.

He is a member of the collective Hotel Simplon and collaboratively manages the experimental publishing project Conservative Books in Basel. Jacob Ott’s works and performances have graced numerous exhibitions, including venues such as Kunsthalle Basel, Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Galerie 3000 in Bern, Fondazione Morra in Naples, and Galerie Albarran Bourdais in Madrid.

Johannes Willi (Basel, Switzerland) is an artist whose creative initiatives and projects define his artistic universe. He is the founder of I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel and previously managed the Hinterhof Offspace in Basel from 2011 to 2013. In 2017, he expanded his offspace operations to Colombia with the exhibition space CRISPR Bogota.

Since the spring of 2020, Johannes Willi, alongside his artist collective Juice & Rispetta, has overseen both analog and digital spaces. A graduate of the HGK and the ZHDK, he furthered his artistic horizons as a scholarship holder in the Flora Ars+Natrua program in 2017 in Bogota, Colombia. His international experience includes residencies in Beijing, Lugano (LagoMio), and New York (ResidencyUnlimited). In 2018, he participated in a scientific expedition in Nigeria, focusing on primate research. In 2019, he was part of Zhdk’s Artists in Labs program. His work has found a home in renowned galleries and museums, such as Kunstmuseum Basel Gegenwart, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Tank in Basel, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Kunsthalle Basel, and Centre Contemporain in Porrentruy. Additionally, he has made significant contributions to the art scene as a board member of the Basler Kunstverein and created the experimental platform for digital art coverage, OOO, in early 2023.

Johannes Willi has been involved in teaching since 2015, holding positions at ZHDK in the Trends & Identity course. He has also taught at the Institut Kunst FHNW Hgk Basel, the Institut Hyperwerk Hgk Basel, the Akademie der Künste Nürnberg, the HfG Karlsruhe, and the LungA School in Seidisfjördur, Iceland.