SCHAUFENSTER (Performance)
Long Durational Performance, 6 - 40 hours
2023

Schaufenster is a long durational solo performance in a glass cube.

Lyn Bentschik turns their own body into an artistic medium and a surface onto which social attributions are projected. The gaze shifts from the outside to the inside: a person in a glass box, exposed to the judgments and expectations of onlookers. The work moves between vulnerability, resistance, and self-empowerment. It is radically honest, quiet, and yet impossible to ignore.

What becomes visible is how identity is negotiated within the tension between attribution, role changes, and self-determination. All of us constantly shift between roles—such as private individual, parent, or worker. These transformations usually occur silently, out of sight, carried by the same body that remains unchanged and yet is read differently. In Bentschik’s work, costumes, gestures, and duration become elements of a choreography in which outward appearance is continually re-coded. What remains hidden in everyday life comes into the light here: the constant confrontation with gazes and expectations.​

Schaufenster was the first performance ever to be acquired by the City of Winterthur for its art collection.

EXPOSURE

Kulturnacht Winterthur, kunstkasten (2025)
6 hour version
Ermöglicht durch die Stadt Winterthur

17th Jungkunst, Halle 53, Winterthur (2023)
40 hour version
Ermöglicht durch die Casinelli-Vogel Stiftung