Art practitioner Denise Bertschi holds a doctorate in Arts, Architecture and Environmental Sciences from the “Arts of Sciences Laboratory” at EPFL Switzerland. Her artistic research is located at the intersection of visual culture, critical urbanism and history. She critically investigates not only archives, but landscapes or the built environment on their colonial entanglement related to Switzerland’s role in extra-European expansion. Her academic and artistic work takes the form of video installations, book publications, or films and raises questions about cultural myths, such as Swiss neutrality or Switzerland’s coloniality.

Denise Bertschi’s multi-awarded work is widely exhibited; in the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris, the Swiss National Museum, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Artsonje in Seoul (South Korea), the Artivist in Johannesburg (South Africa) or LACA Los Angeles. She was previously a Getty Research Summer Fellow (Los Angeles) and artist in residence with Pro Helvetia, La Becque and CAN Centre d’Art de Neuchâtel. She published several monographs, including “State Fiction. The Gaze of the Swiss Neutral Mission in the Korean DMZ” (Centre de la Photographie Genève, 2021), “Strata. Mining Silence” (Aargauer Kunsthaus, 2020), and her newest book, the co-edited volume “Unearthing Traces. Dismantling the imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes and the built environment” (EPFL Press, 2023).