Medical Borders
Les Arsenaux, Sion + EDHEA, Sierre (CH)
January 19–April 5, 2024
An exhibition stemming from a collective project at the Haute école d’art du Valais, Medical Borders researched the history of forced medical checks that were performed on foreign workers entering Switzerland. It started from the few surviving medical files (of mostly Italian workers) that were discovered in the Swiss Cantonal Archives. The project questioned the logic of the archive that holds the traces of such history, and proposed new models to preserve the inaudible voices of the hundreds of thousands of people who crossed the Alps with the constant fear of rejection at a doctor’s notice.
Curated by Andrea Bagnato, with works by Jelena Martinovic (principal investigator), Raphaël Cuomo and Maria Iorio, Lucia Bernini and Jonas Heller, Laurence Rasti. Associate researcher: Federica Martini.
read the exhibition booklet (in French)
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