Entanglements: On the role of textiles in art and society

With works by Antje Engelmann, Hermann Glöckner, Renate Göritz, Asta Gröting, Barbara Klemm, Käthe Kollwitz, Reinhard Mucha, Helga Paris, Judith Raum, Rosemarie Trockel and Franz Erhard Walther in dialogue with local textile history. Curated by Susanne Weiß (ifa)

Together with the ‘Purple Path’, the newly renovated railway station in Flöha will reopen its doors as an art station. The station concourse will be the setting for the ifa exhibition ‘Verstrickungen’ (Entanglements), in which ifa presents artists from its own collection in dialogue with local history: Among them are two artists from the collection of the Centre for Art Exhibitions of the GDR (ZfK), whose graphic part with over 10,000 works was transferred to the ifa in 1991. 
 

At the invitation of ‘Purple Path’ curator Alexander Ochs, the exhibition presents artistic positions that are linked to the interwoven history of textiles. Textiles not only bring together tradition and innovation, but also the cause and effect of production and material, patterns and interpretations, as well as values and paradoxes that influence both our economic and social conditions.

‘Entanglements’ brings together important pioneers of 20th century art. From Käthe Kollwitz, one of the most impressive representatives of critical realism, who portrayed the plight of the weavers' guild like no other, to Hermann Glöckner, who came to abstract art through his training as a pattern draughtsman and became an important representative of concrete art in the GDR and thus also a border crosser between East and West, to Franz Erhard Walther, who turned to textiles as a performative and sculptural material in the age of conceptual art, to Rosemarie Trockel, who achieved fame in the 1980s with her knitted pictures. The sculptor Asta Gröting uses seemingly everyday objects and transforms them into ambiguously legible images. Renate Göritz was one of the most important representatives of collage in the GDR. Like Helga Paris, she lived in Berlin and shaped the scene there with her art. Her large-format collages are being exhibited again for the first time since 1991. The artists Judith Raum and Antje Engelmann tell very different stories with their videos. Judith Raum turns her attention to the Bauhaus textile workshop and everyday materials and draws our attention to the hierarchies of perception. Antje Engelmann uses her own family history to examine how the traditions of the Danube Swabians are characterised by migration and craftsmanship, interweaving personal and collective memory.

About the exhibition

The ifa exhibition ‘Entanglements: On the role of textiles in art and society’ is part of the “Purple Path” art and sculpture trail of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025. The project is being realised together with the city of Flöha and is taking place in cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation.

About the art collection of the ifa
The art collection of the ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen currently comprises around 24,000 works from various disciplines of modern and contemporary fine art: architecture, photography and design are represented as well as monographic exhibitions by Rosemarie Trockel or Wolfgang Tillmans. Around half of these come from works purchased for the touring exhibitions, for which curators have primarily developed monographic exhibitions since the 1960s, presenting outstanding artistic positions from Germany. Another focus is on socio-politically relevant projects that reflect contemporary artistic trends and movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. They are presented as touring exhibitions in international museums and cultural institutions, but also beyond the major metropolises. Exhibits are currently on display in 20 exhibitions worldwide, which have also been co-created since the 2010s.

The second half of the ifa art collection originates from the collection of the Centre for Art Exhibitions of the GDR (ZfK), which the ifa took over in part in 1991. Since 2023, this has been researched in cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation. On the digital art platform ifa Agora  where ifa's unique art collection is made visible and tangible: https://agora.ifa.de/de/themen