Press Release

Monster Chetwynd Invited to the 2028 Swiss Sculpture Exhibition

The Swiss Sculpture Exhibition Foundation is pleased to announce that Monster Chetwynd (*1973) will be the invited artist for the 14th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition, to be held in the summer of 2028.

Seven years after Thomas Hirschhorn and his monument to Robert Walser, the ESS is once again inviting a single artist. And for the first time in more than seventy years of existence, this edition has been entrusted to a woman. A British artist based in Zurich, Monster Chetwynd has spent the past twenty years developing a protean and carnivalesque body of work in which references to art history joyfully intermingle with pop culture. Her work has been exhibited around the world and was the subject of a major retrospective in 2025 at the Kunsthaus Zürich.

For the ESS, in collaboration with curator Raphael Gygax, Monster Chetwynd intends to develop a project that will unfold across several sites throughout the city in the summer of 2028, exploring notions of power, social justice, and utopia in public space. Alongside her reimagined sculptural productions, a number of activations may also take place: performances, concerts, workshops, and more.

The ESS Foundation has planned a budget of one million Swiss francs for the realization of this ambitious edition, one third of which will come from private funding. In keeping with its long-standing commitment to the exhibition, the city of Biel/Bienne has decided to contribute CHF 300,000.

To carry out its mission, the ESS Foundation has also revised its organizational structure. The presidency has been entrusted to Mr. Cédric Némitz and Ms. Liv Enya Torresan. The other members of the foundation are Mr. Stanislas Zimmermann, Mr. Julien Steiner, Ms. Glenda Gonzalez Bassi, Mr. Romeo Burkhalter, and Mr. Paul Bernard. Mr. Tobia Bezzola also serves as an external advisor, while Ms. Jenna Paratte is responsible for the secretariat.

It has furthermore been agreed that the KBCB, the contemporary art center of Biel/Bienne, will now play a leading role in the organization and supervision of the exhibition.