The Colors of Colonial Chemistry
Dyes, Photography, and Architecture in 19^th Century Switzerland

Project by

Denise Bertschi
Early-Career Fellow 2024–2025

In this project, Denise Bertschi aims to trace architectural witnesses of Swiss coloniality. Based on site-specific research in the immediate neighborhood of the Collegium Helveticum Denise will use archival work and aesthetic inquiry tools. Through the lens of material and visual culture, the chemistry of dye-wood and the chemistry of photography are the guiding material traces that lead from a small-place analysis to a global colonial entanglement of Switzerland with Brazil in the 19^th century concerning the history of science and Swiss nation-building in the mid 19^th century. It aims to re-narrate a visual and material history of Switzerland's founding moment around 1848, when the Swiss state received its first modern constitution while simultaneously expanding its global trade with the Global South. Based on archival research and sensory fieldwork in the immediate neighborhood of the Collegium, a red thread of material and visual traces is spun that is linked to a Swiss bourgeoise elite family. Serving as an exemplary compendium, its family members' histories reveal their influence reaching concurrently into Swiss politics, military, scientific knowledge, and global capitalism between Switzerland and Brazil.