THREADS OF LIFE Corina Gertz & Hannah Maria Schmutterer

Autumn 2026   As part of the World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026 – Design for Democracy. Atmospheres for a better life   As part of the 13. Darmstadt Photography Days

With THREADS OF LIFE Corina Gertz & Hannah Maria Schmutterer, the Kunstforum der TU Darmstadt presents an exhibition that focuses on textile practices, cultural identity, and questions of visibility. The title is intended as a programmatic motif: Threads of Life refers to the diverse connections between fabric, body, history, and memory, which both artists make visible in their own unique ways.

Photographer Corina Gertz presents works from her ongoing series The Averted Portrait, which she has been working on worldwide for many years. In her photographs, she portrays women in traditional clothing—but always from behind. The face remains hidden, and the clothing itself becomes a symbol of history, craftsmanship, origin, and social belonging. The result is a quiet yet powerful exploration of themes such as diversity, inclusion, and the values of a democratic society.

»The garments tell of past craftsmanship, origin, family and social status and thus also reveal something about the identity of the wearer, without foregrounding her personal individuality.«

Corina Gertz

Hannah Maria Schmutterer expands this dialogue with works that interweave textile art, painting, poetry, and performance. Her works explore how femininity, memory, and cultural attributions are inscribed in fabrics—and how these meanings can be transformed through artistic practice. By sewing, unraveling, and reconnecting materials, personal and collective threads of life become tangible and are linked anew.

»My primary medium is the dress. Dresses as they appear in fairy tales, folklore, films, pop culture, literature, and art ... Dresses are symbolically charged objects with their own distinctive language and socio-political history.«

Hannah Maria Schmutterer

Together, Gertz and Schmutterer weave together different perspectives on femininity, memory, and cultural identity into a multi-layered tapestry of images: THREADS OF LIFE Corina Gertz & Hannah Maria Schmutterer thus becomes a sensual and intellectual resonance chamber in which photography, textiles, and theory are woven together into a fabric of history, present, and future.

Reference to the topic World Design Capital Frankfurt RhineMain 2026

The exhibition THREADS OF LIFE Corina Gertz & Hannah Maria Schmutterer ties in closely with the theme of World Design Capital Frankfurt Rhine-Main 2026 – »Design for Democracy. Atmospheres for a better life.« Both artistic positions reflect in different but interwoven ways on how aesthetic design can contribute to a deeper understanding of democracy, diversity, and cultural identity.

Corina Gertz's photographic series Das abgewandte Porträt (The Averted Portrait) is a powerful visual plea for diversity, remembrance, and respect – central values of a democratic society. Through her photographic exploration of traditional clothing and textile craft techniques of ethnic origin, Gertz makes a conscious statement against uniformity and cultural homogenization. Her photographs celebrate cultural identity as the foundation of democratic design: they make visible what is often overlooked or marginalized and create atmospheres of pause, empathy, and appreciation for cultural difference.

Hannah Maria Schmutterer's textile, painterly, and poetic works expand this discourse to include a physical, spatial, and narrative dimension. Her works understand clothing as a medium of collective memory and as an instrument of feminist self-determination. By sewing, unraveling, and reworking fabrics, Schmutterer reflects on how identity and gender can be culturally constructed—and at the same time redesigned through artistic action. In her installations and textile images, clothing becomes a site of social negotiation: a »poetic archive« that makes experiences of closeness, vulnerability, and solidarity visible.

Together, Gertz and Schmutterer show that design goes far beyond form and function. Here, design for democracy means creating spaces in which diversity can be perceived, memories preserved, and new narratives explored. Their works demonstrate how art and design shape social atmospheres—atmospheres in which people feel seen, respected, and connected.

In this way, THREADS OF LIFE Corina Gertz & Hannah Maria Schmutterer makes an artistic contribution to the leitmotif of World Design Capital 2026: it refers to the transformative power of aesthetic practices that not only represent democratic values, but also make them sensually tangible—as a lived, designed, and shared culture.

Further information on the website of the city archive

Corina Gertz lives in Düsseldorf and works worldwide. Her photographic practice developed from her studies in fashion and costume design, and for many years she has focused on clothing as an expression of cultural identity.

In her series The Averted Portrait, Gertz explores the intersections between textile craftsmanship, ethnic origin, and social identity. Her photographs show women in traditional clothing from behind—a deliberate counterpoint to the ubiquitous frontal portraits of our time. Clothing becomes a vehicle for stories, symbols, and affiliations without placing personal individuality in the foreground.

Picture: Kris Scholz

Corina Gertz

Corina Gertz lives in Düsseldorf and works worldwide. From her studies in fashion and costume design, she developed a photographic practice that explores clothing as an expression of cultural identity.

Gertz thus makes an artistic statement against uniformity and for diversity, memory, and respect. Her work combines documentary accuracy with aesthetic clarity and conceptual depth.

Corina Gertz has received numerous awards for her work, which has been exhibited internationally at venues including MARTA Herford, the Museum Kunst der Westküste on Föhr, the Lianzhou Photo Museum and Shanghai Art Museum (China), and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (United Kingdom). She has been nominated for the 2025 Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography in Tel Aviv (Israel). In 2025, her works will be part of the European art and sculpture trail Purple Path as part of Chemnitz's year as European Capital of Culture, and will be featured in the exhibition Zwiegespräche (Dialogues) at the German Textile Museum in Krefeld.

Her works fit into international curatorial discourses on gender, textile culture, and global representation – and highlight how fashion, photography, and cultural identity are inextricably intertwined.

Hannah Maria Schmutterer is an artist whose practice combines dressmaking with painting, poetry, and performance. Trained in fine art and fashion design, she explores the aesthetic form and material nature of femininity—and how ideas about womanhood have been shaped and romanticized by fairy tales, myths, and popular culture.

A central motif of her work is the dress as a carrier of memory and identity. Schmutterer treats clothing as both a vessel and a narrative medium—a place where personal and collective stories are inscribed and reinterpreted. Her recent projects include a growing series of sculptural textile works and site-specific installations that rethink the poetic and political dimensions of clothing in space.

Picture: Sarah Berger

Hannah Maria Schmutterer

Hannah Maria Schmutterer is an artist and researcher who works between art, fashion, and poetry. After studying at the Royal College of Art in London and the Berlin Weissensee School of Art, she explores clothing as an aesthetic, memorable, and resistant form of female identity.

In 2025, she initiated the collaborative exhibition and publication project Dress Poetics, which brings together artists working at the intersection of text, fabric, and the body. Schmutterer is currently pursuing her doctorate at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the Section of Fashion & Aesthetics in the Department of Human Sciences, where she is exploring the concept of the »poetic dress« and the aesthetic language of clothing as a form of feminist reflection and resistance.

Her most recent works include ambiguous, figurative, quilt-like textile images in which abstraction and memory merge into narrative potential.

Schmutterer studied at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London (United Kingdom) and at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Kunstverein München, Glasshouse Berlin, Wet Green (Auckland, New Zealand), Acme (London, United Kingdom), and The Jam Handy (Detroit, United States of America).

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