AA000.050#1 // 0.00 - 0.50 CHF // 0.41 CHF // 0.1205 t oz // 10/08/2021
AA201.300#13 // 2.01 - 3.00 CHF // CHF 2.01 // 0.1883 t oz // 05/02/2022
AA201.300#16 // 2.01 - 3.00 CHF // 3.00 CHF // 0.7632 t oz // 02/04/2022
AA301.400#1 // 3.01 - 4.00 CHF // 3.60 CHF // 0.1608 t oz // 03/10/2021
AA401.500#13 // 4.01 - 5.00 CHF // 5.00 CHF // 0.0539 t oz // 07/08/2023
AA401.500#14 // 4.01 - 5.00 CHF // 4.46 CHF // 0.1555 t oz // 25/04/2024
AA501.1000#4 // 5.01 - 10.00 CHF // 9.32 CHF // 2.8771 t oz // 27/10/2021
AA1001.1500#3 // 10.01 - 15.00 CHF // 10.76 CHF // 2.0576 t oz // 04/02/2022
AA1001.1500#8 // 10.01 - 15.00 CHF // 13.97 CHF // 0.6832 t oz // 23/12/2022
AA1501.2000#1 // 15.01 - 20.00 CHF // 15.64 CHF // 5.8193 t oz // 11/10/2021
AA2001.2500#1 // 20.01 - 25.00 CHF // 22.00 CHF // 3.4723 t oz // 11/12/2021
AA1501.2000#3 // 15.01 - 20.00 CHF // 18.85 CHF // 130.9500 t oz // 29/01/2023
AA2501.3000#1 // 25.01 - 30.00 CHF // 28.00 CHF // 2.0576 t oz // 27/01/2022
AA2501.3000#4 // 25.01 - 30.00 CHF // 28.70 CHF // 39.6740 t oz // 19/02/2023
AA4001.5000#2 //40.01 - 50.00 CHF // 43.40 CHF // 7.7483 t oz // 02/06/2024
ARTICULATED ABSENCES (2020-)
Switzerland functioned as a ‘gold hub’ during the Second World War, accepting vast amounts of gold from the Reichsbank in exchange for hard currency and thus playing an indispensable role for the Nazis. However, this financial complicity was concealed after the war. Instead, the Swiss government constructed an official narrative celebrating the sacrificial efforts of the Swiss Army as the reason the Nazis did not invade Switzerland. Alongside in-depth historical research contradicting this grand narrative, this patriotic wartime memory has persisted.
My doctoral research responded to this historical invisibility through a counter-archive of objects and material interventions, to facilitate an alternative engagement with Switzerland’s contested past. By examining objects and materials that perpetuate romanticised perceptions while obscuring historical events—including gold, a material that can be endlessly melted to conceal its origins—the project interrogates the mechanisms of state secrecy in shaping cultural memory and national identity.
