Denise Bertschi holds a doctorate from the 'Doctoral School of Architecture and Sciences of the City’ at the Federal Institute of Technology EPFL Lausanne. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Advanced Studies Institute “Collegium Helveticum” at ETH Zürich. Her research is located at the intersection of visual culture, urban and landscape studies, and history. She critically investigates not only archives, but landscapes or the built environment on their extractive and colonial entanglement related to Switzerland's role in extra-european expansion. Her academic and artistic work takes the form of exhibitions, video-installations, publications or films and raises questions around cultural myths, such as Swiss neutrality or Switzerland's coloniality.
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, Nieuwe Institute Rotterdam, 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 Demilitarized Zone" 2021), "Strata. Mining Silence" (2020) and her newest book, the co-edited volume "Unearthing Traces. Dismantiling the imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes and the built environment" (2023).