KUNSTHALLE TRIER, DE
“Under the weaver’s hands”
27th March - 27th April 2025
Documentation by Omram Bhagchandani
Exhibition text by Çağla Erdemir:
De varme hænder (Hot hands!)
In her sculptural and installation-based practice, Olivia Rode Hvass explores the interconnections between mythology, history, and contemporary social structures. De varme hænder (Hot Hands!) (2023) unfolds as a textile narrative about labor, solidarity, and resistance.
The title Hot Hands! refers to the media portrayal of striking healthcare workers, who were often reduced in public discourse to their caring hands—a metaphor that exposes the structural invisibility of care work and the instrumentalization of caregiving as a moral duty. Hvass takes up this tension and expands it by exploring the connection between craftsmanship, labor, and empowerment.
The installation forms a multilayered landscape of Jacquard-woven tapestries, treated wood, stones, sand, and plants. It evokes images of past struggles and emerging new beginnings: charred sticks stand as silent witnesses, while delicate plant structures hint at fragile yet resilient transformations. The textile works carry symbols of upheaval—including a towering blaze between high-rise buildings. They summon memories of ancient rituals while directing attention to pressing contemporary social issues.
De varme hænder understands weaving not just as a craft technique but as a narrative practice that intertwines past and future. The loom, whose principles are closely linked to digitalization, points to a network of craftsmanship and technology, care and progress. Through the interplay of archaic and digital techniques, Hvass traces the remnants of inherited stories and asks what forms of solidarity can emerge from the ashes of outdated structures.
Thus, the installation becomes a threshold space—a place where past and present merge, and where caregiving is not seen as a burden, but as a radical force for change.
Credits:
Concept & Production: Olivia Rode Hvass
Production Assistant: Claus Hvass
On-Site Production Lead: Wilhelm Frankreiter
On-Site Production Assistant: Marcel Scharipow
Under the weaver’s hands
With under the weaver’s hands, Kunsthalle Trier opens its doors to a dynamic and thought-provoking dialogue between textile and performance art. Running from March 27 to April 27, 2025, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the intricate relationship between body, material, and societal constructs Textiles transcend their functional and decorative purposes—they embody sto
ries, preserve memories, and reflect structures of power, identity, and belonging.
As an artistic medium, textiles possess a rich and diverse history, spanning traditional craft techniques to experimental avant-garde practices. Early pioneers such as Anni Albers, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp recognized the potential of textile design within abstract art. Later, the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s deliberately embraced textiles as a means of articulating political and personal narratives.
Today, textile-based artistic practices are experiencing a renewed presence, emerging as tools of resistance, historical reclamation, and the deconstruction of established norms.
The exhibition under the weaver’s hands brings to light narratives that have been marginalized, forgotten, or silenced by dominant cultural and social frameworks. Through the layering of threads, the fractures within woven textures, and the irregularities of fabric, the exhibition reveals absences and gaps—those silences overlooked by prevailing historical narratives. Here, the thread assumes a symbolic role: as a vessel of memory, an act of defiance, and a marker of complex identities.
Textile craftsmanship has long been intertwined with binary gender perceptions. While traditionally associated with femininity in the Global North, in other cultures—suc as West Africa or Japan—it has historically been male-dominated. Meanwhile, in some societies, gender was never seen as fixed but rather as fluid and adaptable. At the same time, Western art discourse frequently marginalized textile-based practices as mere craft, relegating them outside the realm of "high" art.
under the weaver’s hands critically examines these narratives and questions how textile practices have historically shaped, regulated, or defied notions of identity.
A complementary performance program expands on these themes, making the exhibition’s woven narratives physically tangible. Through movement, language, and interaction, textile structures are activated—the material is no longer simply observed but experienced. In this synthesis of performance and textile art, under the weaver’s hands invites reflection, remembrance, and transformation.
Exhibiting Artists:
Mercedes Azpilicueta
Bérénice Gaça Courtin
Pierre-Yves Delannoy
Robert Gabris
Katharina Gahlert
Olivia Rode Hvass
Melike Kara
With Performances by:
Sadrie Alves
Bérénice Gaça Courtin
Pierre-Yves Delannoy
Klara Virnich
Curated by Çağla Erdemir.