Heidi Bucher (1926–1993) trained at the School for Applied Arts, Zurich, initially specialising in fashion design. From the early 1970s she developed her signature practice of Häutungen (skinnings): covering architectural surfaces, furniture, and garments with gauze and liquid latex, then peeling the dried membrane away in strenuous, repeated acts. The resulting skins are translucent, iridescent with mother-of-pearl, bearing the precise imprint of rooms and objects. These were radical feminist gestures intended to expose and shed the stifling patriarchal layers embedded in ancestral domestic interiors. “Rooms are shells,” she wrote; “rooms are skin.”

Largely overlooked in her lifetime, Bucher’s work has been substantially reassessed in recent decades. Major posthumous exhibitions include Beyond the Skins, Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2023); Metamorphoses, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021–22); The Site of Memory, Parasol Unit, London (2018). Her works are held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Kunsthaus Zürich.