“Photographs contain meanings beyond their visual content that words alone cannot express. They contain stories and reasons why they are taken, kept, remembered or mourned when they are lost. The memories and emotions that photographs unconsciously trigger can be helpful in helping people explore different aspects of themselves and their lives.” (Judy Weiser)
Tina Ruisinger has been dealing with the issue of human transience for a long time. Her work Traces was about the things a person leaves behind when he dies, the current work Ashes (Asche - und was vom Ende bleibt, currently exhibited at Friedhof Forum Zürich), is about the concrete remains of the person after cremation. In doing so, she focuses on what was and is no more, but also on what lives on, in memories, dreams and fears. Life and death are the two physiological processes that all human beings go through, and their interface, the transition from one to the other, is what interests Ruisinger, not only as a human being, but also as an artist. Showing this through photographic means has led her to various photographic projects and thus, also to a more intensive examination of the finiteness of the lives of the people she was allowed to accompany photographically.