Stirnimann-Stojanovic’s processual installation Win-Win For Life (Edition 3) consists of 2000 intact scratch-off lottery tickets, arranged to fill the wall in the lettering “LOOOOSERS?”. With Win-For-Life tickets they try to transform the production budget into a potential basic income of CHF 4’000.- and refer to the precarious conditions of artists. Life becomes a game.

The first edition was created for their master’s thesis at the ZHdK. The loser lots subsequently became the material for the second edition. Through glass micromosaics they open there the discussion about invisible artistic work. Today the second edition is in the collection of the city of Zurich. They developed the version shown at the “Werkschau 2023” especially for the context of art competitions and won the “Kiefer Hablitzel | Göhner Art Prize 2023” with it. Art prizes offer artists a breathing space, but uncertainty remains.

Process and “Outcomes” are part of the installation. For the first time, there is a “Secured Outcome” in the third edition, because the twelve nominees who do not win the work grant of CHF 24,000 can count on a fixed grant of CHF 8,000 for their participation this year. A step in the right direction, the two think. Moving closer to the installation, one notices the triptych of micromosaics, two of them self-portraits. The artist Stefan Stojanovic, who was classically trained in Serbia, put them together from glass in eighty hours each. A symbol of transparency, with which the duo explores the question of how visible work must be in order to be recognized. Stirnimann-Stojanovic unite the two poles of art: “making and thinking,” craft and concept. After the exhibition, the two scratch the lots in pairs, sharing with the audience only the potential, the “what if?”.

In the end, the question remains: What if artists were not dependent on winning the lottery in order to have a sufficient income?

Text for “Werkschau 2023” by Claudia Heim, Kunstbulletin

Werkschau 2023
Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich
Photo documentation, credits: Peter Baracchi

Award: “Work stipend 2023” granted by the department of culture of canton Zurich