Olivia Kaufmann – Textile Art | Experimental Graphic

I am an artist who works with textiles. My work focuses on creating traces through dyeing, printing, and embroidery, whereby I use a method that allows for random effects. The dyed fabric is cut, layered, sewn, and embroidered to establish relationships between traces and textures. I specialize in printing with an algae-based paste and combine the prints with fabric fragments to create collages to which I add hand-embroidered marks as a drawing element.

My works predominantly depict abstract landscapes that allow for a range of interpretations. They draw their vitality largely from the contrast between fabric fragments, arranged in a deliberate composition, and the algae prints with their random structures.

In my images, I explore liminal spaces without a precise beginning or end, such as the horizon, which appears to mark a clear line between sky and earth, yet eludes any attempt to actually approach it, or the state in the morning between no-longer-quite-asleep and not-yet-quite-awake. I engage with the in-between and the theme of ambiguity, through which I aim to bring the hidden and the overlooked into focus. This exploration questions supposedly stable states and clear convictions which raises questions about attribution, visibility and value within our society. Liminal spaces open up a perspective that reveals that fixed assumptions are unstable and must be continually questioned. Nothing is set in stone. There is no either/or. This is the central insight that can be derived from my work.

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My artworks have been exhibited both in Germany and abroad since 2023.

My works “Unisono”, which won the Design Award at the international textile exhibition “Trame a Corte 2025” (IT), "Korridor", which won the third Women United Art Prize in 2023 and “detrimental”, which received a special mention at the world-renowned International Triennial of Textile Arts 2024 in Szombathely (HU), attracted particular international attention.