Denise Bertschi

Denise Bertschi is an artist-researcher and lives and works in Switzerland. She is currently a doctoral candidate at EPFL Lausanne in collaboration with HEAD–Genève, where she works at the intersection of artistic research and Swiss colonial history. She completed her MA in visual arts at HEAD-Genève and her BA at ZHdK Zurich. Her work has been shown in diverse art institutions in Switzerland and elsewhere: the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris, the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, LACA in Los Angeles, the Museum für Kunst und Gestaltung MKG in Hamburg, RosaBrux in Brussels, Artsonje in Seoul, and WITS University in Johannesburg. She was awarded the Manor Kunst- preis in 2020 at the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the “Most Beautiful Swiss Books” award in 2021 and in 2019, a research grant by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and was nominated for the Swiss Art Awards in 2019. Together with Dunja Herzog, she was shortlisted for the Swiss Pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale. Various project contributions from Pro Helvetia and the Aargauer Kuratorium have funded her artistic research. She completed an artist’s residency at CAN Centre d’art de Neuchâtel in 2021, which was followed by a residency at LA BECQUE. In 2017—2018, Bertschi spent several months in Johannesburg on a Pro Helvetia residency grant and four months on a commissioned research trip to Bahia, Brazil. Her first monograph STRATA. Mining Silence was published by Edition Fink and the Aargauer Kunsthaus in 2020, followed by her mono- graph State Fiction. The Gaze of the Swiss Neutral Mission in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, published by the Centre de la Photographie Genève in 2021.