Nathalie Duc is the creator of « Secret de Sucre », a conceptual and contextual project launched in 2009 which consists of interacting with works of art in artistic contexts, without causing any damage, in order to comment on the creations of other artists.
Secret de Sucre is a project based on oral tradition, allowing the public to use their imagination to reinvent the stories of this complex and colourful project.
Since September 2023, Nathalie Duc has been conducting research, taking as her starting point the figure of Emil Bührle and his collection, exhibited at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, before branching out into an analysis of the art market and its players.
To carry out her investigation, Nathalie Duc consulted researchers throughout Switzerland.
She had the honour of meeting Ann Demeester (director of the Kunsthaus), Jakob Tanner (UZH), Matthieu Leimgruber (UZH), Félix Bühlmann (UNIL), Raphael Denis (Kunsthaus artist), Emilie Widmer (UNIL), Stéphanie Ginalski (UNIL), Sébastien Guex (UNIL), Dominique Vinck (UNIL), Martin Hilti (Transparency), Hans-Ulrich Jost (UNIL), Monika Roth (Roth Schwarz Roth / ex-UNILU), Thomas Buomberger (author of the « Bührle Black Book »), Ursula Cassani (UNIGE), Marc-André Renold (ex-UNIGE, Renold & Associé-e-s), Carlo Lombardini (UNIL).
Nathalie Duc created collages based on some of these interviews.
The collage is a reconfiguration of a moment in time between two people, a synthetic staging of an often intense dialogue, rich in information and insights.
The experts featured in the collages were given the right to choose the phrase that would be inscribed on their dedicated work.
Nathalie Duc will also be performing a Secret de Sucre intervention in the exhibition « Kunst, Kontext, Krieg und Konflikt » organised by the Kunsthaus Zurich, based on the Bührle Collection, on 20 September 2025.
The intervention will take place on the interactive installation proposed by the Kunsthaus. This is an installation inviting the public to write on blue discs with white pencils, allowing them to express their thoughts on the exhibition.
Nathalie Duc created 440 elements copying the blue discs, inscribing the results of her survey in English.
The shape of the cogwheel was chosen rather than the disc: The cogwheel evokes the mechanism, the system, war, the mine (the weapon).
Each cogwheel has eight teeth.
As Nathalie Duc signs 8 ; the fact that the cogwheels have eight cogs signs the objects. The cogwheels were laser-cut from MDF wood and painted with dispersion paint.
The cogwheels are two colours: pink and black. Pink is the colour of Secret de Sucre, and black evokes conflict and war.
The cogwheels are defective; they do not fit together.
This was designed to show that the art market is poorly configured and dysfunctional.
440 sentences were written on the cogwheels.
These 440 sentences are the result of an investigation, transformed into works of art.
To create these cogwheels, Nathalie Duc collaborated with around fifty people, including two main actors, Mehdi Bouhanek and Alexis Thiémard.
In June 2025, Nathalie Duc exhibited these 440 intervention objects in an exhibition in Fribourg, at the Galerie de la Cathédrale.
On 7 June, during the opening of this exhibition, she gave a lecture explaining her intentions and the various stages of the project.
On 20 September 2025, the Secret de Sucre intervention will take place at the Kunsthaus, where Nathalie Duc will place the 440 cogwheels on the Kunsthaus installation, bearing the blue discs.
Returning to the subject of the wheels, we must look back at the leading arms manufacturer of the last century.
Emil Bührle, a German naturalised Swiss citizen, 20th-century collector and leading figure in the Swiss weaponry industry, has spoliated works of art in his collection.
However, Nathalie Duc realised that the collector was just one player among many in the intrigues of the totalitarian landscape of the 20th century.
Today, the players in the shadows are still at work. New totalitarian attitudes of a new kind are gradually taking hold.
While shady figures in the art market no longer actually engage in spoliation as such, they take advantage of other strategies that are just as harmful to society, such as money laundering or tax evasion through art.
Nathalie Duc has therefore turned her attention to subjects that are as controversial as they are complicated.
Not content with mere criticism, the artist proposes a solution to the deregulations of the art market. She calls this solution the
« Offices de régulation du marché de l’art » (Art Market Regulatory Offices).
The money collected by these Offices would be used to finance grants for artists, more substantial public funding for museums, subsidies for galleries, and to support the regulatory offices themselves.
Combative and determined, Nathalie Duc tackles colossal subjects, embodying the results of her reflections in powerful artworks that foster far-reaching reflection on society.
Nathalie Duc studied multimedia design at eikon (Fribourg), visual arts at edhea (Sierre) and transdisciplinary research at the Geneva University of Art and Design (Geneva). She currently teaches art history in Geneva, but has also worked as a gallery owner, cultural mediator and editorial assistant.