Sharing Stories

When grandparents tell their grandchildren bedtime stories, a moment of shared presence and attentive listening is created. Sharing Stories aims to explore storytelling, drawing and publishing as artistic tools to promote exchange – both between generations and across borders.

In the first edition of the project series Sharing Stories, we collaborated with the Dogo Residency and the Monterana School in Degersheim and Lichtensteig in October 2024. The project found its continuation in September 2025 in cooperation with the local school in Arasadzikh/i and with SKLAD, an art space in Sukhum/i. In both regions –Toggenburg and Abkhazia¹ – local stories were shared in a collaboration between local families, especially children, and the participating group of artists.

In Degersheim and Lichtensteig, the school children created oral and visual documentation using various methods such as writing, drawing and audio recordings. The results of the first phase with the children of the Monterana School were on display on 26. October 2024 at the Rathaus für Kultur in Lichtensteig. The several meter long collective painting was later exhibited as part of the Artas Community Event at the Kulturbüro Zürich where it remained on display before continuing its journey to Abkhazia in the form of digital scans. 

As artists with Swiss passports were unable to travel to Abkhazia, the project expanded into the digital space. These external circumstances prevented the group of artists from collaborating in person during the second phase of the project and required them to work separately in their respective regions. This had a significant impact on the process. The artists developed various strategies for collaboration: workshops were held in parallel, materials were shared and reused, communication was intensified, and the digital space was incorporated through the creation of a website. 

In the second phase, the artistic methods – including writing, drawing, collages, zine-making, and audio recording – were further enriched by a special printing technique and video recordings. These approaches were once again used to create oral, visual, and acoustic documentation. The resulting materials, along with physical letters and small objects, were exchanged between the children, the young people and the artists in both regions, explored, and served as the basis for further artistic work and cross-border exchange. 

The overall project was presented on 14. September 2025 at the local art space SKLAD in Sukhum/i, where it was enthusiastically received by a big audience. The exhibition included a collage of scanned fragments of the original several-meter-long wallpaper from Toggenburg, which served as a canvas for the participating school children and was displayed as a large waterfall, inspired by the name of the village Arasadzikh/i.