An exploration of the work of Silvie and Chérif Defraoui, important pioneers of multidisciplinary and multimedia art and of art education in Switzerland.

Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui, born in 1935, realized a significant part of her work beginning in 1975 together with her husband Chérif (1932–1994). Silvie and Chérif Defraoui compiled their photo and video works, installations, sculptures, and performances under the title Archives du Futur. They taught together at Geneva’s École supérieure des Beaux-Arts (today HEAD–Genève), where they founded the legendary studio Média Mixte and taught a number of renowned artists.

The Archives du Futur, to which Silvie Defraoui has continued adding works since Chérif’s premature death, has been made available as a digital catalog raisonné to browse online. This book accompanies, supplements, and expands on the digital documentation. It gathers fourteen commentaries on individual works of the two artists by distinguished art theorists and curators, originally published from 1984 onwards in various art journals and exhibition catalogs or newly written for this book. They reflect on the artists’ joint oeuvre as well as on work created independently by Silvie Defraoui. Interviews with her and selected lecture texts from the couple’s shared teaching activities shed light on their artistic stance and thematic focuses.

The volume invites an exploration of an artistic body of work that is highly topical through its merging of dualities—memory and the present, Orient and Occident, man and woman, tradition and invention.

Bigna Guyer is an art historian and curator of the art collection of the Swiss Canton of Zurich. Chérif Defraoui (1932–94) was a Swiss artist, art educator, and a pioneer of mixed media art. Silvie Defraoui is an artist, art educator, and a pioneer of mixed media art living and working in Switzerland and in Spain. Jean-Paul Felley is an art historian and director of EDHEA The Valais School of Art in Sierre, Switzerland. Olivier Kaeser is a Swiss-based art historian and freelance curator. Christophe Kihm is a Paris-based art critic and theorist and a professor at the Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD—Genève) in Geneva, Switzerland. Daniel Kurjaković is an expert of contemporary art and program curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland. Marie-Louise Lienhard is an art historian and former director of Helmhaus Zurich. Hans Rudolf Reust is an art critic and head of studies at the Department of Fine Arts, Bern University of the Arts. Corinne Schatz is a freelance writer and curator based in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Philip Ursprung is professor of art and architectural history at ETH Zurich’s Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta). Anna Vetsch is a Zurich-based art historian and curator. Denys Zacharopoulos is an art history scholar, critic, and curator, and has held appointments as professor at various European art schools and universities.