Auto Didaktika

The unique wire model collection of the Swiss collector Edmond Remondino documents an early phase of a craft that today enjoys international renown with collectors and researchers. In the 1970s and 1980s the models evolved from real prototypes such as race cars from the Rally du Burundi; today, as then, the extraordinary aesthetic, alternating between minimalism and comic-type exaggeration, captures the imagination. However, these cars, planes and helicopters, often referred to as ‘recycled art’, are in no way assembled from rubbish. In Burundi old tin cans and metal wire are considered an important basic material in handicraft.

Interdisciplinary essays discuss the works of the self-taught working engineers in terms of their skillful production and the history of Burundi as well as from an industrial design viewpoint, showing completely new aspects of a genre of African art that is now more than forty years old.

Text in English and German.