ST MORITZ.- As part of the newly founded art programme REFLECTION, the award-winning Italian artist Marinella Senatore will present a set of new site-specific light installations (Luminarie) entitled I Contain Multitudes in St. Moritz, Switzerland, from late August until October 2026. The installations will be shown at Schulhausplatz and Forum Paracelsus.
REFLECTION is a public art programme that places site-specific works in dialogue with their surroundings and in relation to the people of St. Moritz. It is the first major project initiated by the newly established Kulturstiftung St. Moritz (St. Moritz Cultural Foundation) itself. Beginning in 2026, artists will be invited every two years to spend time in residence in St. Moritz. Drawing on the experiences, traces and inspirations encountered during their stay, the resulting artworks are intended to enter into dialogue with the urban and alpine landscape, whether temporarily or permanently. The programme is conceived and artistically directed by Mareike Dittmer.
To inaugurate the programme, the Cultural Foundation invited Marinella Senatore. Through the active involvement of local residents, the artist weaves experiences and stories from the community into the narratives of her works. Senatore’s practice does not begin with the unveiling of an object presented to an audience, nor does it end at the moment of display. It begins much earlier and continues long afterwards, in the resonance of what has been shared. Senatore opens the process widely: the becoming of the work itself, and the ways in which it is experienced, carried and remembered. Earlier this year, Senatore invited participants in St. Moritz to contribute thoughts and quotations during a writing workshop, enabling her to quite literally 'bring them to light' within the Luminarie.
ALP Summer Laboratory
As part of the annual ALP Summer Laboratory, the Kulturstiftung St. Moritz, in close collaboration with curator Mareike Dittmer, invites a transdisciplinary group of artists, writers and researchers to situate their knowledge and experiences within the alpine landscape through exchange and dialogue. ALP is a laboratory for applied experimentation that seeks to create a “brave space”—a place of open-ended exchange where participants collectively search for responses and explore new ways of thinking and imagining.
The first edition of ALP 2026, entitled Alpine Landscapes of Perception, did focus on engaging with landscape as a space of perception. Invited participants include artist and director Piet Baumgartner; composer and sound designer Fabian Gutscher; sculptor and installation artist Sara Masger; and artist Maya Minder. Guest contributors include writer and critic Jan Verwoert, artist and curator Johannes Hedinger, and photographer Daniel Meuli. Eight students from across Switzerland have been selected through an open call to participate in the laboratory. The participants have also developed formats for a public programme emerging from the Summer Laboratory, inviting encounters and exchange on August 22 and 23, 2026.
