Textile Art

The textile works bring together traditional craft and digital tools. This juxtaposition creates a productive friction: what is designed on screen has to be renegotiated in fabric.

What fascinates Hirschfeld about textiles is their closeness to history. Embroidery is a cultural technique passed down through generations, knowledge that lives in the hands. Anyone who embroiders today connects with these skills and carries them forward.

At the same time, textile opens up a new dimension for what Hirschfeld expresses with brush and paint. The thread has a materiality of its own, uniting the inherited and the contemporary into an image with its own depth.

Participatory Installation / Haus der Kunst

In July and August 2021, the installation “M!SS!NG” was first displayed on the meadow of the House of Art (Haus der Kunst). Inspired by the Asian tradition of the wishing tree, the artist created an installation with embroidered linen ribbons. 150 fabric strips tell stories of things that are missed, of longings that Tanja Hirschfeld collected during the pandemic years. These longings were formulated and embroidered in handwritten form with red thread on white linen strips. The strips resemble blood-stained bandages, thus evoking the idea of wounds that should heal.

Regarding her inspiration, the Munich-based artist says, “Longings can motivate us, or they can become entrenched and painful. Over the past year, many longings have intertwined, which I have captured and want to visualize. I have collected words and sentences from friends and strangers that describe these longings.”

An international and participatory art project, 40 women from Germany, Austria, India, Switzerland, Italy, Slovakia, France, and the artist herself embroidered the strips by hand. Hirschfeld found the participants through social media. She says, “This craft part of the project was also a kind of therapeutic work.” The intention was for the fabric-incarnated longings to weather, crust, and ultimately heal on the tree.

Thanks to the female embroiderers:

Andrea Nossem, Aneta Palovicova, Angelika Hepp, Annamaria Leiste, Ashita Desai, Betti Wahle, Christina Pfeiffer, Elisabeth Saitta, Eva Bauer, Francesca Pescitelli, Gabi Buchner, Gaby Lexen, Gunda Nölcke, Heidi Boscher, Heike Schmid, Inge Dietrich, Iveta Sedilekova, Jasmina Krajacic, Kathrin Kohl, Katja Linke, Malaika Krüger, Maria Palovicova, Michaela Probst, Mirjam Kerkmann, Monika Krickl, Pia Elgas, Quitterie Cohen, Renata Kavoca, Renate Schmid, Sabine Kante, Sonja Kramer, Stefanie Sammeck, Tanja Unger, Tatjana Naaf von Sass, Tini Rühmer, Ulrike Bergmann, Ulrike Mantz, Ute Palme, Veronika Spleiss, Viola Reiter