LAUSANNE.- The Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (MCBA), is presenting DECORAMA, the third iteration of Jardin d’Hiver—an exhibition dedicated to the contemporary art scene of the Lake Geneva region—bringing together artists whose practices use ornament and decoration as tools to question notions of taste, class, and gender.

Today, ornament is recognized as a fundamental marker of our humanity and individuality. Yet its value and legitimacy have always been questioned. For a long time, it was seen either as a useless decorative addition or, conversely, as a symbol of the divine and a vehicle for knowledge. In either case, this notion is closely tied to how we think about the relationship between function and beauty. With the rise of modernism in the early 20th century, ornament—often equated with mere decoration—was discredited by functionalist movements and elitist intellectual discourse. Industrialization and mechanization, by making it possible to endlessly reproduce motifs, further contributed to relegating craftsmanship to the status of “minor” art.

From early on, ornament has raised questions related to gender identity and sexual orientation, and in this sense, it has sometimes been perceived as a threat to the established order. Caricatured as feminine adornment, it has often been associated with excessive, inappropriate, even monstrous frivolity. However, with the advent of postmodernism in the 1970s, ornament regained a legitimate place within the so-called “major” arts. It never truly disappeared, often present in implicit and underground ways, as a formal, conceptual, and political strategy.

This exhibition pays tribute to Marc Camille Chaimowicz (1947, Paris – 2024, London) whose work and thinking laid the foundation for DECORAMA.

With contributions from Elie Autin, Caroline Bachmann, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Sebastián Dávila, Sarah Margnetti, Julie Monot, Stéphane Nabil Petitmermet, and Guillaume Pilet.

Curated by Elise Lammer.

Elise Lammer has been the director of Halle Nord in Geneva since September 2024. She studied curating at Goldsmiths College in London and is currently pursuing a PhD on Derek Jarman’s garden, jointly between the University of Art and Design in Linz and the Institute Art Gender Nature in Basel, where she also teaches. Elise Lammer has curated numerous exhibitions in various Swiss and European museums, including the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; mumok, Museum Ludwig, Vienna; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; MACRO, Rome; Kunsthaus Langenthal; Centre culturel suisse, Paris; MAMCO, Geneva; Kunsthaus Glarus; Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Rome; and the Goethe-Institut Beijing. She served on the Kiefer Hablitzel commission (from 2015 to 2022) and was a visual arts expert for Pro Helvetia (from 2022 to 2024).

Publication

Elise Lammer (ed.), Jardin d’Hiver #3. DECORAMA, with contributions by Estelle Hoy and Denis Pernet, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2025, Coll. Jardin d’Hiver, n°3, Fr./Engl. CHF 5.–