Progetti d'arte in Val Bregaglia

Contemporary art in a valley of passage, since 2020

Contemporary art biennial; four editions, from 2020 to 2026

EVENTS

Progetti d'arte in Val Bregaglia, Castasegna

The association Progetti d'arte in Val Bregaglia brings contemporary art into the villages and landscape of the valley. Since 2020 it has organised the Biennale Bregaglia every two years, with artists working on site in dialogue with the inhabitants.

Covers: details from photos by Luca Gerber (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Adrian Michael (CC BY-SA 3.0), Wikimedia Commons, and of Souvenir di montagna by Umberto Cavenago

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A road with tight hairpin bends descending through fir woods, seen from above

The hairpin bends of the Maloja Pass road, descending towards Val Bregaglia

Photo: Luca Gerber, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Biennale

Since 2020 Val Bregaglia, the Italian-speaking valley of Graubünden that runs down from the Maloja Pass to the border at Castasegna, has hosted a contemporary art biennial every two years. The artists work on site, in the villages and in the landscape, often in dialogue with the inhabitants, and the works are visited outdoors, along a route. The Biennale is organised by the association Progetti d'arte in Val Bregaglia, which since 2010 has brought art to places in the valley with the Chur gallerist and curator Luciano Fasciati: the Hotel Bregaglia (Arte Hotel Bregaglia), Palazzo Castelmur (Video Arte Palazzo Castelmur) and the Albigna dam (Arte Albigna). In March 2019 the Bregaglia municipal assembly approved a credit of 245,000 francs to fund the 2020, 2022 and 2024 editions.

The editions

2020, Promontogno. The first edition, curated by Luciano Fasciati and postponed by a month because of the coronavirus, ran from 5 July to 27 September around the church of Nossa Dona and the Müraia, with site-specific works by twelve artists from Switzerland's four language regions. 2022, Vicosoprano. Curated by the art historians Bigna Guyer and Anna Vetsch, it turned the village into an open-air museum on the theme of the ties between villages. The artists included Lena Maria Thüring, Rico Scagliola and Michael Meier, Andriu Deplazes, Alexandra Navratil, Zoé Cornelius and Nevin Aladağ. 2024, Bondo. Curated by Misia Bernasconi on the theme of architecture and gardens, in a village changing its face with the reconstruction after the 2017 Piz Cengalo landslide. Ten projects by Kotoaki Asano, Lisa Collomb, Athene Galiciadis, Georg Gatsas, Marcel Herbst, Piero Maspoli, Juliana Rios Martinez, Lea Schaffner, Ines Marita Schärer and Jonathan Steiger.

Transito, 2026

The fourth edition, from 7 June to 27 September 2026, is curated by Anna Radaelli and titled Transito (Transit): the physical passage of people, goods, objects and ideas, but also the changes that remain. For the first time the Biennale runs through the whole valley, along the old transit routes: from Maloja to Alp Cavloc, Casaccia, Borgonovo, Stampa and Promontogno, down to the border at Castasegna. There are ten artists: Simone Berti, Umberto Cavenago, DEM, Al Fadhil, Haruka Fujita, Pietro Pirelli, Celia and Nathalie Sidler, Kathrin Siegrist, Helena von Beust and Dominik Zehnder. In Stampa, in the hayloft of the Centro Giacometti, Simone Berti presents Urugallo. On the Maloja Pass, at the Festung Maloja, Umberto Cavenago has installed Souvenir di montagna, a large habitable erratic boulder in Cor-Ten steel that remains on the pass permanently.

The hairpin bends of the Maloja Pass road, descending towards Val Bregaglia

Photo: Luca Gerber, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0