BIO

Artist Biography
Born 1965, lives and works in Winterthur, Switzerland

I'm a mixed-media, Ethnic background: Sinti south of france, Italian, Polish and swiss.

Born into a family of artists, Sabina Speich has lived and worked for over three decades in the interplay between personal experience and social space. After completing her preliminary design course in St. Gallen, she studied Media Art (BA) and Art in Public Space (MA) at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, graduating in 2014. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally in off-site spaces, galleries, and museums. She is the recipient of two art awards, has been nominated multiple times, and her work has been featured in various publications. As a mixed-media and multimedia artist, Sabina works across conceptual art, textile crochet, media art, participatory projects, and art activism. Chronic illness and experiences of social marginalization are integral to her artistic practice, not private subjects. They form the backbone of her inquiry into visibility, resilience, and justice within social structures.

Artist Statement

I make art from what others throw away scraps of plastic I find while walking my dog, leftover yarn donated by strangers, cardboard from the trash room. My materials have already lived a life just like I have.
I don’t believe we need to consume endlessly to create something new. I believe in reusing, continuing, and finding value in what still remains. My art grows out of leftovers both materially and metaphorically. My practice resists categorization: mixed media, textile art, performance, conceptual, multimedia, pop art  and yet none of these alone. I’ve never been “standard.” I’m neurodivergent, chronically ill, and have lived with complex trauma since childhood. Despite exhaustion, pain, and social exclusion, I have always created  because creation is survival. In an age of artificial intelligence, plastic perfection, and political regression, I refuse conformity. I celebrate imperfection and the right to exist as we are  fragile, strange, resistant, alive. My recent works include large scale crocheted food sculptures and new pop art crochet pieces that combine simple,  phrases with political or social critique. The loose threads that hang absurdly long are deliberate: a rebellion against bourgeois order, against the idea that art and life must be neat and proper. For me, crochet  a technique I learned during hospital therapy  has become a medium of resistance and freedom. It connects feminist craft histories, Crip Theory, and queer expression with everyday activism and humor. By combining traditional textile work with digital media  often embedding QR codes that link to videos or texts  I seek to blur the lines between the tactile and the virtual, the intimate and the public. My art is fragmented, defiant, and honest. 

Cv „Tüpf Li”, Sabina Speich

Artist since forewer

Sabina Speich 1968, Photo credits, Michael Speich 1933 - 2010 †