Denise Bertschi

Research
Research Associate

Dr. Denise Bertschi is an artist and scholar holding a doctorate from the Department of Architecture at EPFL Lausanne. Her scholarly and artistic work is located at the intersection of visual culture, material history, and architecture history. Juxtaposing visual, archival, and urban research methods, she critically investigates archives, extractive landscapes, and the built environment, examining their colonial entanglement related to Switzerland’s coloniality and critically investigating Swiss neutrality.

Bertschi’s monographs include State Fiction. The Gaze of the Swiss Neutral Mission in the Korean DMZ (2021), Strata. Mining Silence (2020), and she co-edited Unearthing Traces. Dismantling the imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes and the built environment (2023). In 2026, she represents Switzerland at the 16th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.

denise.bertschi@fhnw.ch
www.denisebertschi.ch

  • Photo: Gina Folly

  • Denise Bertschi, Neutrality as an Agent, installation view ALTEFABRIK, Gebert Stiftung für Kultur, Rapperswil, 2018

  • Denise Bertschi, STATE FICTION. Fluid Montage, 2026, detail