Denise Bertschi's is an artist-researcher, whose work is located at the intersection of visual culture, architecture 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 films, video-installations or book publications and raises questions about cultural myths, such as Swiss neutrality.
Denise Bertschi was awarded the "Manor Art Prize" in the Aargauer Kunsthaus in 2020, and twice the " Most Beautiful Swiss Books" in 2019 and 2022 for her monographs. Her work is widely exhibited; in the CCS Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris, the Swiss National Museum in Zürich, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, or Artsonje in Seoul, Artivist in Johannesburg or the 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 entitled "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. Dismantiling the imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes and the built environment" (EPFL Press, 2023).