Enjoying the Silence with Ana Roldán at Friedhof Eichbühl
- Mar 2
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 7
When I arrived to Switzerland several years ago, I was amazed how cemeteries here often function as more than places of burial, and often as living cultural landscapes where art, memory, and everyday life intersect. Across Zurich, historic graveyards such as Sihlfeld and Enzenbühl reveal funerary monuments and architectural forms that have been appreciated as open‑air museums, where people encounter sculpture, memorial language, and contemplative spatial design alongside the resting places of the departed.
This blending of everyday life, remembrance, and aesthetic presence echoes philosophical reflections on death and art: thinkers from Plato to contemporary theorists have insisted that we use art to make sense of mortality, not merely to commemorate loss but to transform mourning into meaningful experience. In this context, Ana Roldán’s Enjoy the Silence (2015), a golden stainless‑steel sphere perched atop the pavilion roof at Friedhof Eichbühl in Zurich, enters into a long Swiss tradition of placing art where life, death, and memory overlap. Its delicate balance and subtle shimmer invite viewers into a space that is simultaneously reflective, playful, and profound.
Ana Roldán (1977), a Mexican-born artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, and performance, frequently engages with cultural codes, language, and symbolic form. In Enjoy the Silence, she draws on these interests to transform a quiet, solemn setting into a site of aesthetic and philosophical engagement. The sphere itself is constructed from "chromstahl getrieben", a type of hammered stainless steel, matt golden galvanised to reflect light subtly without dominating the surrounding architecture.
The sculpture’s placement is crucial to its impact. By balancing the sphere on the edge of the pavilion roof, Roldán disrupts the symmetry and order typically associated with cemetery architecture.
The golden sphere teases the eye, its subtle tilt keeping viewers on tiptoe, always anticipating a roll that never comes. In this silent dance of energy in stillness, the work transforms an everyday structure into a stage for a subtle drama: by day, the sphere gleams against the sky; by evening, its golden surface seems almost to vanish into the subdued tones of the cemetery, quietly asserting its presence in dialogue with light and shadow.
The title Enjoy the Silence further deepens the work’s resonance. On one level, it references the 1990s song by Depeche Mode¹, evoking a contemplative pause, a meditation within the stillness of the cemetery. On another level, it carries a gentle, ironic wit: the directive “enjoy the silence” is addressed not only to the living but also, in poetic terms, to the forever-silent whose presence is memorialized by the site. Through this layered naming, Roldán blends popular culture with philosophical reflection, creating a sculpture that is both approachable and intellectually engaging.
Roldán’s choice of a sphere is equally deliberate. The sphere, as a geometric form, has long symbolized completeness, perfection, and universality. Its placement at the pavilion roof’s corner introduces a subtle tension between the abstract ideal and the irregularities of real-world space, recalling precedents in modern sculpture such as James Lee Byars², whose golden spheres suggested the immaterial and absolute. Roldán adapts this legacy, combining geometric abstraction with linguistic and spatial play.
Enjoy the Silence was originally part of the 2015 public art initiative AAA – Art Altstetten Albisrieden³, which commissioned contemporary works for sites across Zürich. Its installation at Friedhof Eichbühl, a site with free public access, ensures that the work is encountered in multiple contexts: as a contemplative object within a sacred space, as a playful visual intervention in architecture, and as a public artwork accessible to all.
What was meant to be a temporary art project has become permanent: thanks to support from Mobiliar and the local partners, the sphere was assigned to remain a fixture of Friedhof Eichbühl. Since then, while, paradoxically, inviting meditation on impermanence, the sculpture now asserts a lasting presence, offering both reflection and joy to the community that has embraced it.
Text by Donna Leonard
Address:
Friedhof Eichbühl
Friedhofstrasse 94
Stadtkreis 9
8048 Zürich
Switzerland
Commissioned by:
AAA – Art Altstetten Albisrieden (2015 public art initiative)
Supported by:
Mobiliar insurance company and local community patrons
Notes:
1.Depeche Mode – “Enjoy the Silence” (1990) is the iconic song, evoking contemplation, stillness, and reflection. The catalogue commentary from the AAA exhibition treats the title reference as meaningful, especially in the cemetery setting, stating that it resonates both poetically and ironically, inviting visitors to pause in the quiet of Friedhof Eichbühl.
2. Roldán’s golden sphere evokes the legacy of James Lee Byars (1932–1997), an American artist renowned for his minimalist and conceptual practice. Byars often used perfect geometric forms, especially spheres, frequently in gold, to explore the immaterial, the absolute, and the sublime. His work emphasized ritual, spatial presence, and performative aspects of sculpture. Roldán referenced Byars’s "Monument to Language" conceptually in "Enjoy the Silence", turning his articulated language into a quiet invitation.
3. AAA – Art Altstetten Albisrieden (2015) was a public art initiative, which brought contemporary artworks into community spaces across Zürich. The project emphasized accessibility, public engagement, and dialogue between contemporary art and everyday architecture.
