Valerie Reding

Valerie Reding is a transdisciplinary artist living based in Zurich, Switzerland.

After their training in classical ballet and modern dance in Luxembourg, they studied Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and Media Arts at the Universities of the Arts in Zurich (ZHdK) and Vienna (Angewandte). Besides their academic studies, they worked internationally as a makeup artist and explored the art of drag in San Francisco.

Today, all these experiences nourish their eclectic artistic practice combining performance, photography and text. They work independently as well as collaboratively in varying national and international contexts ranging from theaters, galleries and other cultural institutions to more underground and nightlife spaces, defying any kind of categorization.

Their work explores how societal power structures configure identity and relationality - how they become inscribed in our bodies and shape how we relate to ourselves and each other. Drawing from personal and collective trauma, Reding is committed to creating spaces for marginalised narratives and crafts sensorially rich environments that invite audiences into spaces of generative togetherness. Their visual works and performances unfold as radical acts of vulnerability and resistance, where identities are fluid and the body becomes a site of protest and collective transformation.

As their drag alter-ego VulVenim - a seductive, poisonous and ever-transforming shapeshifter playing with the monstrous and the grotesque - they create thought-provoking live performances. They are also the creative director, producer and host of the queer and sex-positive party WET DREAMZ - a community event with various artistic interventions that celebrates all bodies, identities and sexualities. Together with their awareness team, Valerie Reding aims to create a safer space for marginalized communities where no racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, ageism nor any other kind of discrimination or bigoted hatred are tolerated.

They are currently associated artist at Tanzhaus Zürich, with whom they started collaborating in 2016 and have produced several coproductions, like WILD CHILD (2017), m.a.d. (2020), lovefool (2023) and monsters (2024). Their current coproduction with Tanzhaus Zürich, wet dreams, will premiere there January 22, 2026.

They have performed at festivals like La Bâtie (Geneva), zürich moves!, Zürich Tanzt, World Expo 2020 (Dubaï), The Queer Biennial II (Los Angeles), FdS - Festival artistique des affects, des genres et des sexualités (Lausanne), Superball (Amsterdam) and Queer Little Lies (Luxembourg) as well as at theaters like Rote Fabrik (Zurich), Tanzhaus Zürich, Dampfzentrale (Bern), Arsenic (Lausanne), Théâtre St. Gervais (Geneva), Counterpulse (San Francisco), Le 140 (Brussels) and Escher Theater (Luxembourg). Their works have been shown in galleries such as Istituto Svizzero (Milan), Commonwealth & Council (Los Angeles), Casino - Forum d’Art Contemporain (Luxembourg), Last Tango (Zurich), Kulturfolger (Zurich), FORMA Art Contemporain (Lausanne) and LAC (Vevey). They have collaborated with artists and curators like Simone Aughterlony, Martin Zimmermann, Marc Streit, Genosidra aka Carlos Quebrada, Joseph Wegmann, Lukas Beyeler, Teresa Vittucci, Simone Mousset, William Cardoso, Malika Fankha, Daniel Hellmann, DIVAS, Thomas Giger, Antje Schupp, Bastien Hippocrate, Lou Drago, Patricio Ruiz, Joshua Wicke and David Weishaar.