G.A.S. Foundation is delighted to welcome Eva-Maria Bertschy for an immersive two-week residency this January. Based in Switzerland, Eva-Maria is a playwright, dramaturg, and director known for her innovative approach to documentary and political music theater. As a co-founder of GROUP50:50, her practice sits at the intersections of theater, political activism, and material histories, delving into colonial legacies, globalization, and the complex ties between Europe and Africa. Her work bridges historical narratives with contemporary issues, fostering dialogue and transformation through artistic collaboration and performance.
At G.A.S. Lagos, Eva-Maria is focusing her research on the trade history of African (Swiss) lace and its ties to the Vorarlberg region in Austria. With a keen interest in materiality and trade, she seeks to uncover the stories woven into the fabric of these relationships by engaging with wax and lace traders, researchers, and artists. She also hopes to explore local markets, cultural events, and historical warehouses while examining the role of the Union Trading Company in Nigeria and visiting operating textile factories. This research forms part of GROUP50:50’s broader project, which investigates the colonial and postcolonial trade routes of European textiles in West Africa, merging historical narratives with creative expression.
Eva-Maria Bertschy at a presentation. Image courtesy of Roberto Boccaccino.
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
I am a playwright, dramaturg, and director. Together with GROUP50:50, a collective of artists from Congo and Switzerland, I have developed a unique form of documentary and political music theatre where we tell stories about the historical and contemporary economic and political interconnections between these countries, while demanding the return of cultural heritage and reparations for colonial crimes and ongoing human rights violations. Our work addresses the history of globalization, colonial domination of the African continent, and the neocolonial practices of exploiting people and nature.
Since its founding, GROUP50:50 has produced two music theatre pieces, THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING and ECOSYSTEM, which have toured more than 20 cities across five countries on two continents. These productions were accompanied by a series of encounters and screenings under the title THE TIME FOR DENIAL IS OVER, which has brought together over 70 artists, activists, and researchers in six cities. Our artistic work consistently carries a clear political and social mission, making a meaningful contribution to current debates.
We have always aimed to intervene in political and social debate with our productions, striving to inspire transformation through the tools at our disposal. THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING focused on the transcontinental political discourse around the restitution of African cultural artifacts and ancestral remains. It told the story of seven remains of the Mbuti people, which a Swiss doctor brought from Wamba in the Congo Basin rainforest to Geneva in the 1950s and which are still archived at the university. We successfully persuaded the University of Geneva to advance the case and initiate a dialogue with the Mbuti community in Wamba about a possible future for their ancestors’ remains. In ECOSYSTEM, we narrated the colonial history of deforestation in the Congo rainforest and highlighted the neocolonial practices in climate and nature conservation that currently affect the people who live in and depend on the rainforest.
ECOSYSTEM, 2025, Production film still under the artistic direction of Eva-Maria Bertschy, Joseph Kasau, Kojack Kossakamvwe and Elia Rediger. Image courtesy of GROUP50:50.
What drew you to apply for this residency and how do you think it will inform your wider practice?
For the present project, I’m traveling to Lagos, Accra, and Abidjan together with the musical director of GROUP50:50, the Congolese guitarist and composer Kojack Kossakamvwe. We are researching the long history of textile trade between Switzerland/Austria and West Africa. Since its beginnings, the European textile industry has been closely interwoven with the history of the colonies. The well-known part of this story is that the European textile industry imported raw cotton from the colonies. What is less widely known is that fabrics manufactured in Europe have been exported to the colonies since the 18th century.
With WAX UNITED (working title), developed by GROUP50:50 embarks on a search for traces of the colonial links of the Swiss textile industry. The research begins in the archives of the Basel Mission and continues along the trade routes to Ghana. It examines cotton fabrics produced in Switzerland, the Indiennes, which became a popular commodity for trading slaves on the Gold Coast; Indonesian fabrics that West African soldiers brought home to their wives from the Java War; the invention of "African Wax" by a Dutch textile company that copied an Indonesian printing technique; the Basel Union Trading Company (UTC), which organized retail in West Africa and sold wax fabrics produced in the Glarus Alps; the efforts of West African governments to establish a national textile industry after independence; the West African traders who became millionaires from the wax trade; the rise and fall of Austrian lace producers from Lustenau, who sold their products along the West African coast; and finally, the influx of low-cost Chinese fabrics that eventually flooded the market.
The Time For Denial Is Over discourse in Leipzig, 2022. Image courtesy of GROUP50:50.
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
During my two weeks in Lagos, I would like to meet as many wax and lace traders, researchers, and artists as possible who are working on these topics. I would also like to learn more about the historical warehouses and the activities of the Union Trading Company in Nigeria. And I would like to visit currently operating textile factories.
ABOUT EVA-MARIA BERTSCHY
EVA-MARIA BERTSCHY, born in Düdingen, Switzerland, in 1982, is a freelance dramaturg, director and playwright. Since 2012, she has conceived and realised international theatre and documentary film projects with the Swiss director Milo Rau and the IIPM. At the same time, she regularly worked with the Berlin-based director Ersan Mondtag. In 2021, she co-founded GROUP50:50 with Swiss musician Elia Rediger, Congolese choreographer Dorine Mokha and curator Patrick Mudekereza. With the Congolese-Swiss collective, she developed a two-year, multi-part political project that included the two music theatre pieces: The Ghosts Are Returning (invited to the Swiss Theatertreffen 2023 and nominated for the FAUST) and Ecosystem (Residenz Leipzig and Kaserne Basel 2023). She co-curated three editions of the Between Land and Sea Festival in Palermo. In 2024, she wrote and directed her first own piece, Fremde Seelen / Âmes étrangères (Belluard Bollwerk International, Theater Neumarkt Zurich, Vorarlberger Landestheater and euro-scène Leipzig).
Eva-Maria's residency is generously supported by Pro Helvetia.
