Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN)

photo: Manuel Queiró,Wall, Wall, Well, Well, 2020, installation view,Life, Love, Justice, graduation exhibition, Kunsthaus Baselland, 2020, photo: Christian Knörr

The Art Institute — with gender and nature is a community constituted by artists-teachers and artists-students.

The Institute Art Gender Nature is dedicated to the understanding of an art practice in entanglement with the values of diversity, interspecies coexistence, social justice and love. The practice is understood as a substance that questions materiality, technologies and different knowledges. Art deals with experience and experience is an immediate way to understand our relations to the world – to nature, to all forms of life. Experience is, as well, the realm of the senses, not only the eyes, but synchronically all the organs that made us part of nature. Art is the place that renders evident that Modern science and technology must coexist with indigenous and ancient knowledges. Why? Because the future of a post-colonial society depends on our ability to relate to very different thought systems and to shelter and care for the values of life. The Institute Art Gender Nature wants to be the place where to exercise this ability, the place that performs a trust in artists and art, that, hopefully, would be transferred to our society.

The name "Institute Art Gender Nature" means many things. It stands for the complex history of how a place emerges in which artists are teachers. A place where practice defines the way we think, how we make decisions and the discussions as to what "doing and making" in art actually means. The name discloses in a very specific way what collective learning means.

Chus Martínez, Head of the Institute Art Gender Nature

Degree programmes

Fine Arts

Studying Fine Arts fosters the develop of a distinct, individual artistic position. In the studio, in workshops, in project work and in the context of exhibitions students gradually develop their own artistic language.

Studying mode: Full-time
Teaching language: German
Place: Basel
Duration: 6 Semester
Next start: 20.9.2027

Fine Arts

The masterprogramme focuses on an in-depth examination of the students’ artistic practice. By means of reflection they advance their practice and relate it to the current as well as historical art context.

Studying mode: Full-time
Teaching language: English
Place: Basel
Duration: 4 Semester
Next start: 20.9.2027

Continuing education

Art & Peace

How can art become a force for peace? This programme explores the potential of artistic practice in conflict transformation, community building, and social healing. Through theory, dialogue, and creative action, you develop tools to engage with complex global challenges in ethical and imaginative ways.

Fee: CHF 6'900
Teaching language: English
Place: Basel
Duration: 8 months

Research

Translocal Climate Narratives: Aesthetic Strategies Beyond Solutions and Despair

Translocal Climate Narratives: Aesthetic Strategies Beyond Solutions and Despair is an SNSF artistic research project by Uriel Orlow, Denise Bertschi, Francesca Brusa, Maëlle Cornut, and Laurence Favre exploring the climate crisis’s uneven impacts and interconnections through artistic field studies, developing narratives of resilience beyond technological solutionism and apocalyptic despair.

Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature
Research field: Art, science, and technology, More-than-human aesthetics

Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant.

To the project website

Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature
Research field: More-than-human aesthetics

CAPACIDADES

CAPACIDADES (25 de Abril / 6 de Maio) is a PhD project combining cultural studies and artistic methods to explore the subjects of decolonisation processes and migration (PALOP, Portugal, Switzerland) as consequences of geopolitical trauma through an ecological and postcolonial perspective.

Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature
Research field: More-than-human aesthetics

Research Responsible

Dr. Yvonne Volkart

Head of Research, lecturer bachelor and master

Phone: +41 61 228 40 77 (Central office)
E-Mail: yvonne.volkart@fhnw.ch

Labs

Corona Cinema

Corona Cinema is an online platform that was launched by the Institute of Art during the difficult times of the Covid pandemic in the spring of 2020 for presenting new cinematic contributions, but also as a response to the then-prevalent situation, and in the sense of a new, long-term international project.

Womxn Center

The Womxn Center for Excellence is a think tank with the task of assessing, developing, and advancing a new social language and methodology in order to better understand the role of women in art, culture, science, and technology, in other words, in all fields of knowledge that feed in to culture today.

Art is Ocean

In the spring of 2018 we launched a new series of seminars, workshops, public lectures, and symposia focussing on the theme of oceans. The series reflected the growing interest in the research and experience of oceans and how artists explore nature and inquire into the scientific disciplines concerned with the natural world.

Projects (DE)

Promise No Promises!

Eine Podcastserie des Institut Kunst und des Instituto Susch / Art Stations Foundation CH

Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature

Corona Kino

Als Reaktion auf die aktuelle Situation, aber auch als langfristiges und international angelegtes Projekt hat das Institut Kunst HGK FHNW die digitale Plattform Corona Kino lanciert, auf der periodisch neue Beiträge aufgeschaltet werden.

Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature

Diplomausstellungen (IAGN)

Die Diplomausstellung der Bachelor- und Master-Studierenden des Institut Kunst Gender Natur HGK Basel FHNW im Kunsthaus Baselland zur Gast, zeigt neue Arbeiten von zahlreichen aufstrebenden Künstler:innen.

Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature

Publications

Wild Paper Nr. 33 – «Gifts and Occupations» von Sadie Plant

In der 33. Ausgabe der Wild Papers aus dem Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN) der HGK Basel zeichnet die britische Philosophin und Kulturtheoretikerin Sadie Plant mit «Gifts and occupations» Auswege aus der Akademisierung der Kunsthochschulen.

Date: 29.10.2026
Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature

Wild Paper Nr. 32 – «The Ignorance Dividend» von Ilan Manouach

In der 32. Ausgabe der Wild Papers aus dem Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN) der HGK Basel präsentiert der Comic-Künstler und Forscher Ilan Manouach eine kritische Reflexion über KI und Wissen sowie Transparenz und komplexe Systeme.

Date: 29.10.2026
Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature

Wild Paper Nr. 29 – Joshua Simon: Moses in Cairo

In der 29. Ausgabe der Wild Papers aus dem Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN) der HGK Basel ruft der Autor und Kurator Joshua Simon anlässlich der Eröffnung des Grand Egyptian Museum in Kairo zur Rückführung historischer ägyptischer Artefakte auf.

Date: 1.6.2026
Institute: Institute of Art Gender Nature

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Contact & Team

Prof. Dr. Chus Martínez

Head of the Institute Art Gender Nature

Phone: +41 61 228 41 62
E-Mail: chus.martinez@fhnw.ch

Team Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN)

Phone: +41 61 228 40 77 (Central office)
E-Mail: info.iagn.hgk@fhnw.ch

Getting there

Postal address

Visitor and delivery address