Denise Bertschi: State Fictions. Beyond Blossoms and Borders

Swiss Pavilion presents State Fictions. Beyond Blossoms and Borders by Denise Bertschi at the 16th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. This exhibition for the Swiss Pavilion is commissioned for the first time by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and is curated by Claire Hoffmann, Tadeo Kohan (Centre culturel suisse, Paris).

Since 2013, artist and scholar Denise Bertschi has been developing the long-term research project STATE FICTION, focusing on the presence of Switzerland in the demilitarised zone that divides the Korean Peninsula (DMZ), a locus of congealed international Cold War interests and a source of unexpected images. When the military commanders of the Korean War signed the armistice in 1953, the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC), consisting of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland, was created to monitor the agreement. Since then, Switzerland has maintained a military presence in the DMZ.

At the “Swiss Camp,” Swiss soldiers documented their daily lives and pastimes, their encounters with communities both in North and South Korea, and their fascination with the local flora and fauna using portable cameras. Working through the extensive corpus of these images and archival material spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, Denise Bertschi critically examines the gaze of the supposedly “neutral” soldiers as they perceive this highly political territory through the camera lens. The project also reflects how Switzerland’s involvement at the international level, and its efforts to define its role in a post-war world order, helped forge a narrative combining the national myth of neutrality with a desire for geopolitical relevance.

A living archive
For the Swiss Pavilion, Denise Bertschi will present a selection of her extended research, featuring material archived in the Library Am Guisanplatz—The main library of the Swiss Federal Administration and the Armed Forces. The multilayered exhibition explores the topic of the photographic gaze: who holds the camera, and what remains (in)visible in images? While questioning global power dynamics and their impact on post-war and post-colonial landscapes and communities, the exhibition delves into visual archives as a contested site of memory.

“With these visual archives from Swiss military personnel, produced not only in the South but also in the North of Korea, the goal of this long-term project has always been to unfold and critically revisit these terms of neutrality and what they mean, not only for Switzerland but for the Korean context,” explains artist Denise Bertschi.

The exhibition invites visitors to enter the space-time of a living archive, becoming a place of exchange and a vessel for testimonies from a Korean audience. Organised in two chapters, the exhibition delves into the archive material through films, photographs, textile works, texts, and historical documents. Showcasing the artist’s practice of montage as a political statement, the artworks underline the power structures inherent in the Swiss military men’s photographs and question the instrumentalisation of neutrality.

The second space is conceived as a debating room for plurivocal dialogue on the present-day impact of the archive. It consists of an installation comprising historical images, modulable furniture inspired by the diplomatic debating table of the NNSC, and a new publication edited by the artist, featuring contributions by Korean and international scholars reflecting on the archive. Visitors are encouraged to explore this material and engage with it by writing their own reactions, memories, and emotions, thereby adding on to the exhibition’s constantly growing installation. As a way of returning the archive to its site of origin, the space will gradually become a new chapter of the living archive, including the voices of concerned communities.