Artist Statement / CV
About the artist:
Olivia Kaufmann (born in 1964 in Wolfenbüttel, Germany) lives and works in Lychen, a town in the Uckermark region on the border with Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. From 1986 to 1992, she studied at the Kunstschule Westend, now the Frankfurt Academy for Communication and Design (FAKD), Academy of Visual Arts, Frankfurt am Main. She holds a degree in graphic design, specialising in printmaking under Professor Tillman Gasch.
Since 2023, she has been exhibiting both at home and abroad, including in Poland, Italy, Hungary and Finland, with a focus on textiles and experimental printmaking. Her works are held in private and public collections in Germany and abroad.
She gained international recognition in 2026 by winning the Distinction Award at the 13th International Biennial of Artistic Linen Textiles in Krosno (PL), the Design Award at the international textile exhibition Trame a Corte in 2025 (IT), the Women United Art Prize 2023, Collage & Fibre Arts section (USA), and a special mention for her work at the world-renowned International Triennial of Textile Arts 2024 in Szombathely (HU). In 2023, she was nominated for the Altonale Art Prize in Hamburg (DE) and received an Honourable Mention for ‘Abstract Landscapes’ from Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne (DE).
Contact:
Email: oliviakaufmann@gmx.de
Instagram: oliviaKaufmann_studio
About my work:
I am interested in the overlooked, the inconspicuous, empty spaces and liminal spaces. Observing transformation and transition is closely linked to this, but so is a questioning of my own identity.
I often work with photographic notes that I take on my mobile phone whilst out and about in nature or the city. However, I never draw up sketches for my compositions; instead, I develop the image intuitively. In doing so, I draw on these notes and my visual memory, utilising all the impressions that influence me.
When working on a new piece, I consciously engage with the unique characteristics of my materials. When printing with an algae-based printing paste, random marks and unpredictable effects emerge, which I see as part of the creative process. Sewing, embroidery and tufting enable me to combine layers of material, thereby making time, transition and wear visible. When combined with colour pours, textile collages and transfer techniques, these elements gradually coalesce over time to form a cohesive whole. For me, the beginning always determines the next step, and so technique and meaning are often intertwined in my work. Through overlays, connections and transformations, images emerge in which memory, material and observation quietly converge. Whilst they often remain abstract, they simultaneously seem strangely familiar. For me, working with fabric is a way of exploring how we perceive the world and how we situate ourselves within it.
I see my works as observations and questions, not as answers. Through a slow, attentive engagement with the material, I find a way to view uncertainty as an opportunity, to allow for change, and to understand new meanings as positive possibilities. My artistic process is an expression of hope.