Helveticana
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Swiss Material Culture in Motion
Helveticana is an ongoing research and exhibition format exploring Swiss material culture through clothing, objects, imagery and everyday infrastructure.
Each edition responds to a specific context while drawing from a growing archive focused on movement, work, alpine environments and systems of public life. Rather than presenting fashion history in isolation, Helveticana examines how garments and objects emerge through use, durability, maintenance and continuous adaptation.
Developed through evolving exhibition editions across different cities and contexts, Helveticana explores material culture as a lens through which broader social, geographic and cultural narratives can be read.
Editions
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Zürich
The inaugural Helveticana exhibition presented over 100 Swiss-made garments and objects from the 1930s to the 1990s. Combining alpine-, work- and sportswear with archival imagery and printed matter, the exhibition explored how landscape, labour and leisure shaped a distinct Swiss material culture throughout the twentieth century.
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Beijing
Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Switzerland in China, the exhibition marked Helveticana’s first international edition. Situated within the context of M WOODS Beijing, the project brought Swiss material culture into dialogue with a contemporary Chinese audience through archival garments, objects and research material spanning the twentieth century.
