Kunsthalle Bern is pleased to present the first institutional exhibition by the artist duo Lyna Beggah and Alessandro Ferrari. The exhibition takes place on the occasion of their being awarded the Special Prize of the Kiefer Hablitzel | Göhner Art Prize and is accompanied by a publication.

Lyna Beggah (b. 1999, Lausanne) and Alessandro Ferrari (b. 1999, Milan) have been working together as an artistic duo since 2022. Their practice engages with decolonial, socio-political, historical, and identity-related questions. Their works often take personal and family histories as a point of departure, connecting them to broader historical and political contexts. Both grew up in Switzerland in families shaped by migration: Beggah’s family is from Jijel, Algeria, while Ferrari’s family is from Milan, Italy.

In their work, Beggah and Ferrari examine how colonial histories, migration, memory, and social power structures continue to manifest in individual biographies, material traces, and everyday structures. They are particularly interested in the relationship between personal memory and collective history, as well as in the ways dominant historical narratives are produced, transmitted, and challenged.

Their current research focuses on the so-called “myth of modernity.” An important point of reference is Françoise Vergès’s question “How to live within ruins?” from A Program of Absolute Disorder. From this starting point, Beggah and Ferrari investigate the historical, political, and social conditions of modernity and the material and symbolic remnants through which its effects continue to shape the present.

Beggah and Ferrari completed their bachelor’s degrees at édhéa in Sierre in 2022 and undertook a residency at Ferme-Asile in Sion in 2023. In September 2025, they graduated from the Master in Contemporary Arts Practice (CAP) at Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB). Alongside their artistic practice, they have been running the off-space espace bigbang in Sierre since 2021.