Performance, 8.00 pm
Every Time I See You Coming Down These Stairs, You Disappear Delicately
Alex Ghandour
Kasernenareal (portico), Zeughausareal Zürich

The second intervention of 2026 in the public space of Zurich’s Kasernenareal welcomes Alex Ghandour with “Every Time I See You Coming Down These Stairs, You Disappear Delicately” (2024-2026). The work unfolds through movement and repetition, creating an environment where memory and release converge – “where a delicate fire resists against darkness”, says the artist. Through rolling, lifting and letting go, a ritual of remembrance and belonging takes place, carried by a tenderness passed down from generation to generation. 

The performance pays tribute to those who, through dark times, protected the “adorable fire” - a resilient force of love that refuses to be extinguished. Each repeated gesture, each rotation becomes an affirmation of presence, a silent anthem expressing not only the desire to survive but also the longing for something sacred and shared. 

Amid dust and movement, the performance reaches towards both ancestors and the audience, inviting them to awaken that spark of inner connection, to exist fiercely, lovingly, and to honour a love that remains indestructible, no matter what. As the doilies rise and fall like wings, the piece transforms into a vivid reminder that every act of memory is an act of creation, a reclaiming of one’s right to exist, to love, and to dream. Together, sound and gesture transcend time, carrying forward a flame that wants to be embraced - a soft yet persistent act of defiance against forgetting, a dance suspended between grief and gratitude.

The intervention is curated by Zaira Oram [Camille Regli]

bio

Alex Ghandour (1997)’s practice questions the conditions under which meaning and sensations are produced and circulate. Working across sculpture, painting, performance, and photography, Ghandour’s work is composed like films without cameras, drawing on the logics of montage, repetition, latency and remanence. For the artist, montage does not produce linear narratives but instead disrupts semantics. Signs become charged, displaced, physical. Meaning is no longer read - it is traversed and experienced. Each work functions as a system of transmission in which space, matter, and time respond to one another. It constructs passages, translations, transformations, where motif becomes rhythm, image becomes signal, and presence becomes memory. Their practice opens up space where understanding arrives only afterwards: the work acts first, and then, through shared intensity, a transmission occurs without stable code.
Alex Ghandour holds an MA in Fine Arts from the Institute Art Gender Nature, HGK Basel. Their work has been shown, among others, at MMAG Foundation in Amman, Kunsthaus Baselland, CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Spazio in-situ in Rome, the Musée d’art du Valais, and at Biennale Son in Sion.