Vera Zurbrügg is a Swiss artist based between London and Basel. She obtained a PhD in 2025 from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Her practice-led research focuses on Switzerland’s contested role during the Second World War and its influence on the Swiss national identity. Vera uses an aesthetic of the secret through conceptual readings of objects and material interventions to analyse the impact of state secrecy on collective memory and to critically examine the inherent power dynamics and ideological underpinnings of historical knowledge production. Through a counter-archive of collected and gilded objects, she interrogates the archive as a historical apparatus, following processes of selection and discrimination. Vera is co-founder of RAKE – a visual research collective that uses open-source data to investigate a variety of unseen and obscured elements in society, business, and politics. Additionally, she is a member of the Secrecy, Power and Ignorance Network (SPIN), a collaborative initiative of researchers focusing on the lasting – sometimes violent – implications of deliberate acts of obfuscation, as well as ARCHIVO, a platform dedicated to photography and visual cultures to study their impact on our understanding of the past.
EXHIBITIONS / TALKS (SELECTION)
2024 Library Display, The Admission of Gilt, London College of Communication, London UK, December-January
2022 Artist talk, Screen Research Forum with Bisan Abu Eisheh, Grand Narratives and Hidden Histories - Archiving the Concealed and Excluded, London College of Communication, online, May
RAKE Collective, Peckham’24, Copeland Gallery, London UK, May
RAKE Collective, Artist talk, Faces of the State: Photography, Surveillance, and Networks of Control, in conversation with Max Houghton, part of Peckham 24, London UK, May
2021 RAKE Collective, TNT’21, The Photographers Gallery, London UK, September - May
2020 RAKE Collective, Photofringe, Brighton UK, October
RAKE Collective, Launch, AMP Gallery, London UK, February
2019 Postgraduate exhibition, Everything Was Forever, London College of Communication, London UK, November
Group exhibition, Oscillate, Safehouse 1 & 2, London UK, June
Group exhibition, Visible Justice, London College of Communication, London UK, March
2018 Publication, 'Status', Corrupted Files, London UK, January
2017 Diploma exhibition, Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich CH, June
2016 Group exhibition, I‘ll Think About It Tonight, Zpatiu, Chisinau MD, March
Group exhibition, International Showroom, Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich CH, May
Group exhibition, Shallow Paradise, Dienstgebäude, Zurich CH, June
EDUCATION
2020 - 2024 PhD in Art & Design, London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London
2018 - 2019 MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography, London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London
2016 Erasmus +, Ravensbourne College, London
2014 - 2017 Bachelor of Arts ZFH in Fine Arts, Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich
2013 - 2014 Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, School of Arts, Basel
CONFERENCES
2024 Global New Voices 2024, Contested/ing (Art) Histories, online, November
ARCHIVO, Reframing the Archive, online, October
Peace and Conflict Culture Network, Why Remember?: Reframing Trauma, Sarajevo, BA, July
2023 Queen Margaret University, Shaking the Archive, Edinburgh, UK
2022 University of the Arts London, Disrupting Dominance in the Archive, London, UK, June
Peace and Conflict Culture Network, Why Remember?: Peace, Conflict and Culture, Sarajevo, BA, July