The exhibition is the final opening under the annual thematic Moving Structures: a programme curated by Verzasca Foto which sustains emerging and innovative photographic projects on a national and international level. Between formal investigation and artistic polemic, the programme dissects the convention of photography and interrogates the capabilities of representation of the contemporary art object.

Soft Linings is a homage to the interstitial spaces in which queerness is found and reactivated through reimaginings of the Verzasca Valley. A duet between Scotland-based artist Jess Holdengarde and Swiss artist Massimiliano Rossetto, the exhibition imagines the photographic landscape as an embodied, tactile experience of traces and belonging.

 © Jess Holdengarde, Silver Thread, 2024 

Jess Holdengarde presents a selection of works from GLIMMER, a solo body of analogue photographic work realised in residency with Verzasca Foto and Stills Centre for Photography. Developed through bodily rituals and sustainable darkroom processes, the work brings together locally gathered plants, river water, light, and silver into handprinted images. GLIMMER returns to the river that inspired it, presenting both original works and unseen reimagined pieces. Through photography and sound, the project imagines the interactions between landscape and body as tender queer spaces of refuge and friction, interwoven with moments of magical realism.

© Jess Holdengarde, Residue, 2024

Accompanying GLIMMER, Holdengarde’s new 16mm film, Collecting Light, made with collaborator Chloe Charlton. The sustainably developed short film offers a glimpse into Holdengarde’s photographic approach and sustainable development, providing a transversal exploration of image-making that is grounded in collaboration, care, and environmental serendipity.

Complementing the sultry tones of Holdengarde’s work, Massimiliano Rossetto introduces a hazy, lilac landscape of materiality and sensoriality through sculptural and photographic works from his projects FEROCE and we left skin in the cracks. Unearthing moments of encounter between queerness and the environment, Rossetto attends to the materiality of a valley in which queerness is both hidden and available for all to relish in its pleasures: moments of recognition, separation, and renegotiation within a landscape that holds its own soft eroticism in its openings and memories.

Rossetto’s Alpine images and familiar shapes are less a romanticised vademecum of a Ticino imagination than they are shrapnel from queer encounters: latex snakeskins evoke encounters spent and consumed; folds in faded waterfalls crystallise the landscape within a memory transformed through repeated interaction.

© Massimiliano Rossetto, Fioriva, 2025

In Soft Linings, latex gives way to metal gives way to bronze gives way to organic compounds. Rocks become soft crevices and sensual openings. Holdengarde’s and Rossetto’s works become repositories of memories and an environmental sensuality that is available for those willing to inhabit it.

Jess Holdengarde (b.1991) is a South African lens-based artist, living on the Isle of Lewis with their studio based in Glasgow. Their work examines photography’s role in responding to environmental, social, and economic crises, focusing on how image-making can inspire critical reflection and hopeful action within the polycrisis. Through experimental darkroom techniques, site-specific approaches, and embodied practice, they integrate sustainable methods across photography, writing, sound, and moving image. Their practice often unfolds through collective and collaborative methods, creating spaces for shared knowledge, experimentation, and dialogue.

Holdengarde has exhibited internationally in Germany, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK. In 2024, they were the recipient of the Verzasca Foto Artist-in-Residence programme in Switzerland and presented their first major solo exhibition at Stills Centre for Photography in Edinburgh. They are currently Stirling University’s selected Artist-in-Residence, with upcoming solo exhibitions in Scotland and Switzerland this year.

Massimiliano Rossetto (b. 1993) is a Swiss-Italian artist working across photography, sculpture, and multisensory installation. His practice investigates the entanglement of landscapes, bodies, and memory through a queer ecological perspective. He holds an MFA from ZHdK – Zurich University of the Arts and a BA in Fine Arts from BLOO, Lyon.

His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions and festivals including standard/deluxe, m.a.x. museo – Spazio Officina, FOTO WIEN, Noorderlicht International Photofestival, Huaguang Photography Art Museum, Mois Européen de la Photographie Luxembourg, Tokyo University of the Arts, and ETH Zürich, and is held in public and private collections. Rossetto has received the Pro Helvetia Focus Photo grant (2025) and the 24th vfg Swiss Young Talent Award for Photography (2020). He lives and works in Zurich.

Soft Linings

Verzasca Foto

Jess Holdengarde & Massimiliano Rossetto

Curated by Dr. Greg Tiani

Casa Azul Coordinator: Mattia Bisi

Associazione Verzasca Foto
CH-6634 Brione (Verzasca)
Switzerland

Opening: August 2, 17.00 – Casa Azul

Opening of Soft Linings, followed by a talk with artist Massimiliano Rossetto and dinner

Finissage: September 6, 15.00 – Casa Azul

Finissage of Soft Linings, informal presentations by artists Jess Holdengarde and Massimiliano Rossetto, mediated by curator Dr. Greg Tiani

https://www.verzascafoto.com/

Cover: © Massimiliano Rossetto, Detail of Cascade, 2025