marce norbert hörler is a performer, visual artist, writer, and educator based between Berlin and Switzerland. marce composes with voice, scent, language, and score, staging them as multimodal forms that operate across registers and move between states. The work takes form in performance, installation, publication, public sculpture, textile, and fragrance, often conceived for ensembles of performers. It is driven by linguistic, etymological, archival, and somatic research, by folkloristic practices and traditions of the eastern Alps, and by an ongoing engagement with scent and olfactory composition.

Language is at the center of the practice. It bends, migrates, condenses, sounds, and enters materials. marce is interested in the worldmaking capacities of sensuous perception, in how language and the body shape each other, and in how embodied and sensory knowledge persists and transforms across time. Scent operates at the threshold of language, acting on spaces and producing meaning beyond the verbal. The poetics and politics of voice, scent, and storytelling are explored as interdependent modes of knowledge and as material for a queer vernacular. Performance and memory are treated as alternate forms of textuality, as evidence of what has transpired. marce also teaches and lectures on these intersections.

marce’s projects include cross-disciplinary collaborations with fellow artists as well as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers, perfumers, publishers, graphic designers. They include lean rüegg, martian m. mächler, Laurent Hermann Progin, Lucas Kramer, Pablo Giménez Arteaga, Nora Wyss, Hannah Mehler, Kari Leigh Rosenfeld.

Selected exhibitions and performances include Kunsthaus Bregenz (AT, 2026), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (CH, 2025), M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art (LT, 2025), Stadtgalerie Bern (CH, 2025), Kunsthalle Basel (CH, 2024), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (DE, 2023), Kleine Orangerie Schloss Charlottenburg (DE, 2023), Kunstmuseum Appenzell (CH, 2023). Awards and nominations include IBKManor Art Award (2025), Mobiliar Art Award (shortlist, 2025), Swiss Art Award (shortlist, 2024), Pro Helvetia Research Grant (2024), Working Grant Basel (2023), junger westen (shortlist, 2023), Swiss Performance Art Award (shortlist, 2023), Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (shortlist, 2023), Working Grant Appenzell (2021). marce has been in residence at Textile and Design Alliance (CH, 2024), Dogo Residenz für Neue Kunst (CH, 2024), Rupert (LT, 2023), Hangzhou / Atelier Mondial (CN, 2017), Zemo Nikozi / artasfoundation (GE, 2016), Sukhumi / artasfoundation (ABH, 2014). Their work is part of collections such as Innerrhoder Kunststiftung, Mobiliar Art Collection, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA). marce norbert hörler studied Comparative Historical Linguistics and Art History at University of Zurich (Zurich, CH) and holds a BA in Fine Arts from Institute Art Gender Nature (Basel, CH) and an MA in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute (Arnhem, NL).

get

marce norbert hörler

about

contact

cv