The projects of Christine Hill (*1968, lives in New York and Berlin) combine artistic work with everyday life. They provide insight into diverse production processes and enable direct participation by the viewer. In this way, the conceptual artist takes up the 20th century tradition of exploring the relationship between art and commerce and, in doing so, takes up actions of the economy. In 1996 Christine Hill founded the Volksboutique label in Berlin, with which she has become internationally known.
Volksboutique examines concepts of "value" in our culture and re-invests discarded appurtenances with meaning and use. The project is to point viewers' attention to specific objects and events in life that risk being overlooked as being too quotidian or too common. Her interest is in defining select arenas where art should be lived. A sort of hobby archivist and librarian, she is invested in keeping inventories of certain daily life phenomena. The artist collects everyday things, small objects that have a history; she arranges, clears, buys, sells, communicates, advises, takes her time, as e.g. in "Small Business" in the form of a ceremony of consultation process between her and the customer and in which through certification objects change their meaning and, above all, their ideal value.
Since 2007 Christine Hill is Professor and Chair of the department Media, Trend and Public Appearance at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. She has participated with her works in documenta X in Kassel in 1997 and in the Venice Biennale in 2007, among others. In 2014 she designed "Hotel Volksboutique" at Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig.
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Christine Hill. Do-It-Yourself Bauhaus, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 2009.Ursula Zeller, Leben als Kunst, in: Volksboutique Official Tepmlate. Kunstraum Deutschland des Instituts für Auslandsbeziehungen, Berlin 2007.Frank Eckart, Eröffnungsrede der Ausstellung "Volksboutique Official Template", ifa-Galerie Berlin, 1. November 2007.Volksboutique Manifest