On a steep hill above Ortisei in the Dolomites, three hundred snow stakes stand in parallel lines, dotting the high green grass with their black-and-yellow bands. Traditionally used to measure winter snow accumulation, each line here marks a retreating threshold—the last year when snow reached that altitude. This minimal yet stark intervention, ‘Degrees of Elevation’ (2026) is the work of the artistic duo Bas Smets + Eliane Le Roux, who are among the 28 artists selected by the Swiss curator Samuel Leuenberger for this year's tenth-anniversary edition of Biennale Gherdëina, titled “(Future) Paradise Garden”. Not all works are so dramatically installed in nature, though many inhabit public spaces and can be found in the streets of Ortisei, in empty shops, a working restaurant, an old tunnel, a private field, or even inside the local museum. It is in one of these distinctive venues, Hotel Ladinia—whose ground floor and bar were reopened for the occasion—that I sat with Leuenberger to hear how he conceived the project, beginning with the garden, and what drew him to it as a curatorial concept.
SL: I started gardening six years ago when I moved to the countryside, and I only really understood the garden as an emotional and philosophical space once I did the physical work—what it can give you in terms of energy, if you listen to it and work with the existing ecosystem. When I started thinking about the Biennale, I had both things in mind: the physical reality of being surrounded by a garden's ecosystem, and the metaphorical one. I quickly realised it was a very beautiful place to talk about current issues. The garden, as we hear from a lot of artists, is also contested—it's not just paradisiac. Some people want to decolonise it; some think it's only for the rich. Every artist has a different opinion of what it means. Still, the garden-setting takes the edge away when you speak about certain things. It was interesting to think of a paradise garden, a future garden—a place where we can actually speak to each other peacefully. It's similar to dog owners: when you walk your dog in the forest and meet someone else with a dog, you immediately speak to each other, knowing nothing about where the other is from or what their title is. Once you have a mutual interest, you can suddenly speak about social or political situations. The garden became very freeing as a metaphor—an invitation to speak about things we worry about.
Bas Sets + Eliane Le Roux, Degrees of Elevation, 2026. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 10. With the support of Nuovi Mecenati - Fondazione franco-italiana di sostegno allacreazione contemporanea. Credits: Tiberio Sorvillo
We went on to talk about Gabriela Oberkofler, a South Tyrolean artist and one of the few selected by the curator through an open call, whose installation The Last Field (2026) occupies a vacant shop near Ortisei’s pedestrian area. The title refers to a decision made in the 1970s to abandon agriculture and embrace tourism—a loss the work makes tangible: plants salvaged from former farmland are cultivated in glass containers on a table under infrared light, while intricate ink drawings on paper of vegetal forms spread across the walls.
SL: The tourism brochures still speak about the 'last field' and I thought it was beautiful that Oberkofler picked up on that, especially since she is from the region. Tourism isn't something we address directly in this Biennale, but it has been a local decision. In the past, families carved figures to make money during the winter, and then suddenly realised that more and more people were coming and needed infrastructure, hospitality, everything that followed. This work is a reminder that we have to be careful not to go too far—that everything we do here has an impact on the climate. Oberkofler asks questions that mirror what's happening today.
Gabriela Oberkofler, DER LETZTE ACKER -THE LAST FIELD, 2026. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 10. Thanks to the Moroder Family, Hotel Maria, Decor, Keim Colors. Credits: Tiberio Sorvillo
Hotel Ladinia hosts a sound installation by Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, an architectural activation by Lydia Ourahmane, and paintings by Evelyn Taocheng Wang—alongside a collaboration, Adaptation as Form (2026), between Gregor Prugger and Leonora Prugger, a father-daughter duo from Val Gardena, who have turned the hotel's own fabric into their medium: radiators, fireplaces, and key racks becoming points of departure for sculptural and painterly gestures.
SL: This is the first time they’ve worked together—there are several artist duos in this Biennale, and I thought it would be interesting to include them. Gregor is from an older generation and has been working with wood in a much more contemporary fashion than his predecessors; when you see his work over the last thirty years you can see what's possible in terms of abstraction and figuration. His daughter, on the other hand, has become a painter—not quite following in her father’s footsteps. She’s interested in capturing the biology and nature very local to here: endemic plants that only grow in one part of the hill, species that can only survive in a very rough environment on top of the mountain—a way of thinking through why certain things belong to certain places. Gregor had exhibited in an earlier edition of the Biennale, but for me—I come from a very grassroots way of exhibiting, with my own space, SALTS—it was important to bring very young voices in and challenge them in this context. I wondered what they would do if they worked together.
Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, exhibition view: Dead Ringer I-VI, 2023. Courtesy of the Artists. With the support of Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Embassy of Lithuania in Italy. With the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
In most cases, artists choose their own space. The exceptions are Hotel Ladinia and Sala Trenker, the two group exhibition venues where Leuenberger suggested the pairings himself. Elsewhere, the right location emerged from walks through Ortisei and its surroundings, where curator and artist let the environment inspire them.
SL: We walked with all the artists—it's very simple: walking opens your eyes. When walking and talking you forget about things that are maybe premeditated if you are sitting at a table; so it's very liberating. There is something very nice about discovering a place together: even if I’d seen it five times already, every time I walked with an artist, they would show me a new element or place I hadn’t thought of. For Bosco Sodi, who did the paintings in the trees Untitled (2026), thirty-two monochrome square paintings in the trees of Ortisei’s S. Antonio Square, it was one of the biggest experiments—just the fact that he was willing to do it was a very open and risky endeavour: to pair his primordial paintings—quite rough, very much about texture and the surrounding earth—as directly as possible with nature. To me, that was a beautiful gesture of faith. Most people wouldn't dare leave paintings out there, open to the weather.
Chanelle Adams, Test Pit, 2026. Excavated earth, wooden stakes, fencing wire, rope, audio guides, street sign 300 x 300 cm. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 10, With the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo
Asked about public space, Leuenberger insisted on the importance of bringing locals along and drew on the example of Chanelle Adams, whose Test Pit (2026) cuts a deep excavation into one of the last privately held plots at the outskirts of Ortisei, exposing soil as archive and the Dolomites themselves as remnants of ancient marine life.
SL: I am very much interested in the public space and how we can move between the private and the public in art.The way we do it here in the Biennale: some things are outside, some inside, some in spaces like this hotel. What is fascinating is that you can only do a project this size if the people living here are on board. Those who own the stores, those who have the right to say something—they all need to be convinced. It’s really a communal effort. I learned this in Basel when I curated Parcours: you need to speak all the time openly about what contemporary art is and what it can be, because there are still a lot of misunderstandings. A concrete example is Chanelle Adams’s project done on the private grounds of an older lady. Initially, she was afraid it would be a big sculpture blocking the driveway—a classical idea of sculpture, on a plinth or whatever. It took a little time to explain how far the intervention could go, that it could work with the garden and nature, in ways far less invasive than putting a big chunk of something on her grounds. And, funnily enough, in the end it’s one of the more risqué and radical works in the Biennale—we went as far as digging a hole. We went from a very stigmatised view of what a public sculpture is to a very radical piece in the owner’s backyard. And this all just happened through conversations.
Lydia Ourahmane, Hotel Ladinia, 2026. 12 tables, stools, lights. Dimensions variable. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 10, With the support of Institut Ramon Llull and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E). Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo
For someone who has built his practice at the intersection of institutional and grassroots exhibition-making, the question of why contemporary art is important today feels fundamental. I asked Leuenberger how he would answer this question—and as he spoke, he gestured around the room: we were sitting inside Lydia Ourahmane’s installation, Hotel Ladinia (2026), inside the Hotel Ladinia closed since 1998, where visitors are invited to bring their own drinks and gather around bespoke tables to play chess and converse, bringing the space back into use.
SL: It’s very simple: we need artists to interpret the current issues of society. Contemporary art really connects to current issues; that’s what makes it good. If something looks too far into the past or becomes merely referential, it loses its interest. Lydia’s work here is a good example: for her, it’s very important to activate the space again, to bring people in who can share stories, sit together, speak. Very simple interventions—the lights, the tables—but they mean something. People have been coming in asking if we reopened the bar, and suddenly we have conversations again. That, to me, is what contemporary art can do.
Stepping outside, Ortisei hums with its usual summer business—tourists, hotels, terraces—and its mountains rising improbably on all sides. I am reminded that somewhere above, invisible from where we are, three hundred stakes stand in the high grass, keeping their count.
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Biennale Gherdëina 10 “(Future) Paradise Gardens” artists include: Chanelle Adams (1992, US); Andrius Arutiunian (1991, Armenia/Lithuania); Jacopo Belloni (1992, Italy); Alice Bucknell (1993, UK/US); Leonardo Bürgi (1994, Mexico/Switzerland); Giulia Cenci (1988, Italy); Sandra Knecht (1968, Switzerland), Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė (1986, Poland; 1987, Lithuania); Judith Neunhäuserer (1990, Italy); Walter Niedermayr (1952, Italy); Masatoshi Noguchi (1988, Japan/Italy); Gabriela Oberkofler (1975, Italy); Lydia Ourahmane (1992, Algeria); Gregor Prugger and Leonora Prugger (1954, Italy, 1995, Italy); Ana Prvački (1976, Yugoslavia/Romania); Augustas Serapinas (1990, Lithuania); Bas Smets + Eliane Le Roux (1975, Belgium, 1983, France); Bosco Sodi (1970, Mexico); Constantin Thun, Kelly Tissot (1995, France); Álvaro Urbano (1983, Spain); Yuyan Wang (1989, China); Evelyn Taocheng Wang (1981, China); Pedro Abu Wirz and Michael Marder (1981, Brazil/Switzerland, 1980, Canada/Portugal).
- Cover Image:
<p class="p1">Augustas Serapinas, Barn from Saltria, 2026. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 10. With the support of Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Embassy of Lithuania in Italy. Thanks to Chemun de Urtijëi, Monica and Hugo Moroder, Walter Wanker, Albert Lagede. Credits: Tiberio Sorvillo.</p>
