Butler Gallery Garden Studio Residency – Susanne Horsch

During a recent residency at CCA Derry in December 2025, I developed the foundations of a new body of work that I intend to realise as a stop-motion animation within an immersive soft-sculptural installation. Having established the conceptual and visual groundwork for this project, I now plan to continue its physical development to complete the work for a solo exhibition at University of Atypical, Belfast, in October 2026. 

My practice is rooted in textiles and soft sculpture, which I use as metaphors for the invisible and often unspoken textures of human experience. Reflective writing plays a central role in my process, guiding the excavation of internal narratives that later manifest as physical forms. Writing and drawing act as the starting points for an emerging narrative that will underpin the animation. 

The performative and all-encompassing act of transforming the Project Space at CCA in Derry into an immersive drawing allowed me to inhabit the emotional and psychological terrain of the developing story. This large-scale, room-filling drawing functioned as a research space, providing the foundation from which I will develop a storyboard and, subsequently, the soft-sculptural sets and props for the animation. This next stage of intensive making will take place during the Butler Gallery Garden Studio Residency in March. 

I envision this body of work as a form of soft-sculptural cinema, where elements of the animation extend beyond the screen and into the physical space of the viewer. Characters, landscapes, and emotional textures will become seating structures, spatial markers, and atmospheric forms, dissolving boundaries between viewer and artwork and inviting audiences into a tactile and psychological environment.

About the Artist
Susanne Horsch is a Swiss installation artist whose practice investigates the complex relationship between mind and body, drawing on feminist, queer, and affect theories to explore how emotions, thoughts, and lived experiences shape both individual and collective identities. A graduate of Ulster University Belfast with an MFA in Fine Art, she works primarily with textiles and soft sculptures, using them as metaphors for weaving together the often-invisible elements of human experience. 

Textiles inform both her physical and conceptual practice, with techniques such as batik serving as a language through which she excavates and exposes hidden emotions, memories, and personal histories. Reflective writing is central to her work, offering introspective space that guides her artistic development while challenging isolated narratives surrounding mental health and emotional labour. Her evolving three-dimensional soft sculptures function as archives of personal and collective experiences, inviting viewers to confront intimacy, vulnerability, and shared emotional landscapes, fostering connection, understanding, and collective healing.