BEX.- Contemporary art has returned to the wooded slopes of the Parc de Szilassy for the 16th edition of the Bex Arts Triennial, transforming the nearly 200-year-old landscape into a place where geology, memory and environmental change are allowed to speak.
Titled “Génies du lieu”—“Spirits of Place”—the open-air exhibition brings together 21 artists and artist duos whose sculptures, sound works, photographs and landscape interventions respond directly to the history and physical character of the park. Curated by Monique Keller and Anne-Outram Mott, the exhibition remains on view through October 3, 2026.
Rather than treating the park as an attractive background for sculpture, this year’s edition asks visitors to consider it as an active participant. Its trees, minerals, views, paths and buried histories become both material and subject.
The curatorial concept takes inspiration from the idea of the genius loci, the spirit traditionally believed to inhabit and protect a particular place. At Bex, that spirit is not presented as something fixed or nostalgic. It emerges through competing layers: Alpine romanticism, industrial development, botanical exchange, colonial history and the growing effects of climate change.
A landscape shaped to appear natural
The Parc de Szilassy was created during the 1830s and 1840s under the direction of Lady Louisa Hope and her daughter Elisabeth, who moved from London to the Vaud Prealps. Designed in the English landscape tradition, the park was carefully arranged to appear spontaneous, with paths, wooded passages and selected views opening toward the surrounding mountains.
That constructed idea of nature is central to several works in the exhibition.
Mirko Baselgia’s nearly invisible Interspace leaves an area enclosed by five trees untouched throughout the Triennial. As the grass around it is cut, the unmaintained section slowly becomes more apparent, revealing how much human labor is required to create the appearance of wilderness.
Baselgia’s second intervention, Interval, connects the life of the park to the people of Bex. The birth and death dates of local residents are engraved on the supports of trees planted in 2026, turning the regeneration of the landscape into a quiet record of human passage.
Other artists look beneath the park’s surface. Hunter Longe’s excavations expose the region’s geological relationship with gypsum, a mineral left behind by the ancient Tethys Ocean. Resembling graves, the openings contain heavily eroded gypsum figures that appear like protective deities unearthed from the soil.
Christian Gonzenbach also works with gypsum, but with a sharper sense of absurdity. His plaster refrigerators stand incongruously among the trees, gradually dissolving in the weather. As their industrial forms erode, they begin to resemble natural stone and reveal objects embedded within them—hair dryers, carburetors, saints and superheroes transformed into the fossils of consumer society.
Works that ask visitors to slow down
Much of “Génies du lieu” rewards patience. Some works change with the light, the weather or the movement of the visitor; others are discovered first through sound.
Chloé Delarue has hidden speakers in a wooded area, where they generate the shifting noise of an invisible swarm of flies. The sound approaches and recedes without revealing its source, suggesting the presence of a decomposing body that is never seen. The work unsettles the senses by separating a familiar sound from the object that should produce it.
Olga Kokcharova also draws attention away from vision. Speakers concealed inside structures resembling beehives play recordings made in the park—voices, trains, vegetation and other fragments of its acoustic environment. When the soundtrack suddenly stops, the ordinary sounds of the landscape become newly noticeable.
The artist duo Gailing Rickling has carved simple seating forms directly into the earth. Positioned to frame views selected when the park was designed in the 19th century, the works encourage visitors to sit in direct contact with the ground. The excavated soil will be replaced after the exhibition, leaving little physical trace beyond the temporary presence of the people who used them.
Guillaume Barth’s Écosophia creates three circles planted with St. John’s wort, yarrow and bellflower. Chosen for their medicinal, symbolic and mythological associations, the flowers form spaces for rest and contemplation while proposing a relationship with plants based on reciprocity: they may care for humans, but they also require care in return.
Colonial movement and displaced species
Several works examine how plants travel—and how those movements are tied to trade, empire and labor.
Ishita Chakraborty’s monumental geranium is based on a scientific botanical illustration and printed on Indian Chapa sari fabric. Today closely associated with Swiss chalets, the geranium reached Europe from southern Africa through 17th-century colonial trade routes.
By enlarging the plant and placing it on a textile commonly worn by women in rural and semi-urban areas of Bengal, Bihar and Bangladesh, Chakraborty questions how foreign species become national symbols while the histories of exploitation and female labor behind their movement remain largely invisible.
Yann Gross focuses on the Trachycarpus fortunei, a palm introduced to Europe in the 19th century. Once planted for its exotic appeal, it has spread through forests in southern Switzerland, displacing indigenous vegetation. His multispectral images reveal a landscape caught between ornamental fantasy and ecological imbalance.
The park itself contains similar contradictions. Its giant sequoia, Canadian hemlock and Atlas cedar were planted as prestigious botanical specimens, reflecting a period when imported species were valued as demonstrations of knowledge, wealth and global reach.
The Alps in a changing climate
Climate change enters the exhibition through Pauline Julier’s Le verdissement des Alpes. Installed in the park’s former water reservoir, the work uses 80 projected slides to explore the disappearance of permanent snow and glaciers and the corresponding growth of vegetation at higher altitudes.
Reflected in the shallow water covering the reservoir floor, the images connect the future of the Alps with their historic role as Europe’s “water tower.” The work also finds an immediate echo in the park, where several of its celebrated tree species are showing signs of stress.
Rachel Morend approaches environmental loss through speculative restoration. Her delicate copper forms recreate the foliage of a dead chestnut tree and are activated by solar sensors. The work resembles a fragile technological resurrection, suggesting both hope and unease in the attempt to replace living systems with artificial ones.
Created in 1981 and based at the Parc de Szilassy since 1987, Bex Arts has presented more than 300 artists over 15 previous editions. Its combination of contemporary art and Alpine landscape has made it one of Switzerland’s most established outdoor art events.
For the first time, the Triennial is operating with a pay-what-you-can admission model. Guided tours, artist encounters, workshops, family materials and audio-description resources accompany the exhibition, widening access to a landscape that is normally closed to the public.
Across its winding route, “Génies du lieu” avoids offering the park as a timeless refuge. Instead, it reveals a landscape that has always been shaped by human choices—and one now being reshaped by forces far larger than any single garden, artwork or generation.
