#huldaforpresident, Hulda Zwingli, 2020, after a portrait of Regula Gwalther-Zwingli, painted by Hans Asper, 1549, Zentralbibliothek Zürich.

Hulda Zwingli is a Zurich-born fictional historical figure, a collective of women artists. Its name refers to the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) and the legendary Zurich Kronenhalle landlady and art collector Hulda Zumsteg (1890-1984). Hulda will end up burning at the stake. According to Wikipedia, she was a prophetess. Her first name means mole or weasel in Icelandic. She anonymously takes apart the art world on Instagram, using images and text to denounce the gender imbalance in the scene. For her profile picture, she used a 1549 painting of Huldrych Zwingli's daughter by Zurich artist Hans Asper, with purple glasses decorated with Venus symbols. #wearehulda #huldaforpresident #huldawho #nastyhulda

 

How and why was she founded?

Hulda was founded on Women's Strike Day 2019 and was born on Women's Strike Day 2020. There was a failed attempt on Twitter in 2015. At that time, no one followed or believed an anonymous figure. Hulda had noticed that most public spaces and museums were occupied by men, which consciously or unconsciously has an influence on the other half of humanity that should not be underestimated.

 

What are her goals, what is her motivation?

Hulda denounces the unequal gender relations in art in the public space and in the art world, but also makes digressions into other areas. She points out the power relations and tries to achieve more diversity and transparency. In Switzerland, despite our great freedom, most museums and many institutions are very one-sided. Hulda is driven by her dissatisfaction and the multi-layered possibilities of the art project on a social medium. The background to this activity is that there is a global shift towards exclusively male-dominated authoritarian regimes that politically disenfranchise or persecute women and other identities. We must use and defend our freedom. Art is the tip of the iceberg and a supposedly harmless eye-catcher for Hulda's content.

 

What are her methods and strategies?

Hulda works with images, text, data, publicly available information, emotions, and interactions. She pretends to be a historical figure who always speaks about herself in the third person, thus enjoying a certain naivety and jester's freedom, also linguistically. She oscillates between overconfidence and despair. She began by walking around the city with cardboard strike signs, barrier tape with slogans, staging herself on empty pedestals, monuments, and art in public space. Hulda then combines the photos with scathing texts on Instagram.

Hulda keeps the login details secret so that her identity is not stolen, as happened to many female artists in the past, although there have been suspicions that Hulda is a man, which have since been disproved. Acting on Instagram allows Hulda to act directly, regardless of relationships, dependencies, age, status, and body image imbalances, although Hulda is careful to remain correct and not to offend people. Between the lines, however, no one is spared.

 

Gute Frage, Hulda Zwingli, 2020.

 

#reclaimculturalsurplus, Hulda Zwingli, 2021.

 

Bahnhofstrasse, Hulda Zwingli, 2020.

 

und sonst?, Hulda Zwingli, 2020.

 

What makes her unique as a feminist art collective? What does she have in common with other feminist collectives, and what sets her apart from them?

The combination of real action, staged photography and the interactive social medium Instagram under a pseudonym creates an unexpected power. The images are attractive, and Hulda receives a lot of praise for the small, refined and sometimes biting language images with messages between the lines. These are made available to interested people in the cultural world, who use them to organise readings, performances, and exhibitions, thus setting their own priorities. This creates a dynamic that also triggers change. There is a lot of interaction with and input from supporters. The entire Swiss (and in some cases international) art world hangs on Hulda's every word, puzzling over her (important) identity.

Hulda has been invited on many occasions, most recently to work on the collection for the ReCollect! exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich. Hulda had often criticised the museum for its one-sided gender balance. Artists were asked to engage with the collection in an exhibition. A film shown at the Long Night of Museums in the Old Masters Collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel will also be shown there. Hulda organises events in museums entirely virtually, using Zoom, avatars, and voice-overs or straw women with buttons in their ears. At the Kunsthaus Zürich, Hulda negotiated an anonymity clause in the contract and delegated two people to the depot and the set-up with the curator. She also accepted a fee for this exhibition for the first time, in part to pay the invited artists. She donated all previous fees to charity in order not to reveal her identity and to maintain her independence.
Over the past three years, Hulda has given numerous interviews to the press and written occasional catalogue texts, including for an exhibition of works from the art collection of the city of Zurich.
Hulda does not compare herself to others. She prefers to leave that to art history.

 

How did she manage to get so much attention?

Hulda was in tune with the times and over several years built up a small but select audience on Instagram, with whom she developed a friendly relationship. She achieved this through good and entertaining images, researched content, witty writing, good hashtags, and hundreds of historical female artists in the stories and figures. She constantly interacts with her audience, including through polls and direct messages. Hulda always gives information when she can and has become something of a confidante. The comments sometimes lead to interesting debates. Criticised museum directors contact Hulda within five minutes if they feel unfairly attacked. Of course, there are always attempts to use Hulda for PR. But Hulda rarely allows herself to be instrumentalised. That is why she only allows historical artists to flicker through the stories. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to resist all the requests and would become a banal exhibition calendar.

 

How were the experiences with the press and institutions?

The press has always been fair and positive! There was a lot of interest in Switzerland for a sector that is almost never covered. Many journalists followed Hulda and she received countless interview requests, which she always answered patiently. She also compiled links and material for documentary programmes for dedicated cultural journalists. Only once has a journalist fumbled too much in her own language.
The institutions are not always amused, but they are constantly adapting to Hulda's guidelines and demands, and they react immediately to criticism, at least in their public relations strategies. One institution even opened an Instagram account because of Hulda.
Another strategy is to involve Hulda. Maintaining anonymity is not easy, and it would be more fun to participate in real life.

 

What power relations does she find herself confronted with and how does she overcome them?

Hulda claims that through the pillory and the projections onto the anonymous figure, she has been able to achieve a great deal, including personnel decisions. The art world has changed fundamentally in terms of gender relations. The question is whether the system can be changed structurally.

Hulda has often been invited by institutions, which always raises questions of power. The experiment of whether Hulda loses or gains power by being invited and involved in institutions is still ongoing. However, Hulda has the power to communicate publicly about her own activities. The art scene is a powerful network because it is closely linked to the market, to money, and therefore to collectors and large corporations. Behind every collector there is a collector's lawyer. So, Hulda has to weigh her words carefully. Wit and ambiguity are Hulda's tools. On the one hand, she has sensitised her peers, and on the other, institutions have adapted their behaviour, often rhetorically at first, and then substantially.

 

What kind of feminism does she stand for?

Hulda does not advocate a theoretical direction. She takes her cue from a feminism that reminds her of the overlapping circles of set theory at school but retains a naïve margin for error and learning processes through the construction of a historical figure catapulted into the present with astonishment. It is nothing new that mechanisms of injustice regarding gender, skin colour, and social conditions are multi-layered, overlapping and sometimes even contradictory, for example, in the (German) language.

 

Mutterland, Hulda, Zwingli, 2023.

 

How is Hulda structured? How are the texts written?

Hulda does not reveal much about the structure, except to say that she works very spontaneously and flexibly, gathering a lot of information from her immediate and wider environment, but also researching tirelessly and creating the visual material on walks together. Everything is seen through Hulda's glasses. However, Hulda is not willing to spread unverified indiscretions. From time to time, attempts have been made to pull her over to one side or the other in conflicts, but Hulda has blocked them. Editing Instagram-limited texts on a mobile phone is different from typing long texts on a keyboard. In this way, Hulda's fictional existence takes on a life of its own. It is important for Hulda to rely on reliable information and numbers, which has created a relationship of trust with many followers. One follower wrote to Hulda that he had developed an understanding of feminism thanks to Hulda.

 

Nudes, Hulda Zwingli, 2022.

 

What are the advantages and difficulties of this newly created art form?

The advantages are anonymity, independence, her own rhythm, reach, the speed with which she can respond to topics, and interaction with followers.
Gender-appropriate language is a sticking point in the German language. There are always people who don't feel taken into account. But there is a lot of tolerance towards Hulda. Hulda tries to keep the countless conversations in a friendly tone. There were rarely any malicious incidents.

It was difficult to accept fees. Now Hulda is represented by a lawyer who makes this possible in order to cover Hulda's costs. The amount of work involved is immense.

Hulda would often like to take part in real discussions at events or make herself known, but then her power would implode. She can't apply for or win any prizes, but she has built up an incredible CV in no time.

Whenever Hulda wants to retire, she finds another grievance.

From time to time, Hulda wonders whether her commitment will lead to a fairer art landscape or whether the same games will simply become more diverse in the future.

Is feminist activism in art still relevant now that many institutions are undergoing major changes and exhibition programmes are almost tilting in the other direction?

Every time Hulda wants to retire, she finds another glaring example of an imbalance. It will take a long time for a rethink to reach all corners of the system. The gender pay gap is still huge, and global politics is heading in an autocratic direction. There is still much to be done!

Hulda Zwingli is an anonymous Zurich-based collective, begotten 2019, born 14 June 2020, the anniversary of the second women’s strike in Switzerland, where over 500,000 women protested in Switzerland. She is a native of Zurich, multiple-personality, and will burn at the stake. She is an Instagram influencer who uses staged photography on city walks, found images and text to denounce unequal gender relations in the art world. Her pseudo-historical identity is based on a portrait of the daughter of Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli, painted in 1549 by Zurich artist Hans Asper which she combined with the glasses of legendary Zurich art collector and Kronenhalle landlady Hulda Zumsteg but combined with Venus symbols. She had appearances at the Kunstmuseum Basel (public Zoom talk with avatar and video in the Old Masters Collection), Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Kunsthalle Zürich, exhibitions in Schaffhausen in public space and at the Kunsthaus Zürich (ReCollect!, curated by Mirjam Varadinis, 2023/24). She was reviewed in countless articles and gave many interviews in the press. She was also asked for catalogue texts and theatre projects.

Elisabeth Eberle (b. 1963) is a Canada-born Swiss artist who lives and works in Zurich. In her work, she deals primarily with the intersection of nature and artificiality, mostly in drawings, videos, and sculpture. In recent years, she has collected an archive about the representation of female artists in the art scene and included her finds in her work. She has received several awards, including a prize from Swiss national foundation Pro Helvetia in collaboration with the US Embassy in Bern, was juried into the artists’ programme of The Drawing Center, New York, and exhibits nationally and internationally, right now invited by Hulda Zwingli at the Kunsthaus Zürich. She holds a master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences from the ETH Zurich, where she came into contact with imaging techniques and scientific drawing.

Hannah-Maria Winters is an art historian, curator, and critic based in Switzerland. With her expertise in contemporary art, her research focuses on the “in-between”— threshold areas in which transformations and power structures become apparent. She examines these processes from a technological, ecological and feminist perspective. From 2018 to 2020 she was part of the curatorial team at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany. She then worked as a research associate in the ZKM publications department and managed various publication projects. Since 2025 she has been working at the Kunstmuseum Lucerne where she is responsible for communication.
She studied at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, the Sorbonne IV Paris, the École du Louvre, the University of Heidelberg and the Zurich University of the Arts. She holds a master's degree in art history and museology.