Karina  Siegmund

Karina Siegmund creates audio-visual tapestry installations, and her use of sound and light gives her audience an experience of patterns in motion. Her motifs are taken from nature, in the form of a stormy cloud-cover on the sky (The Mountain); falling water (Let Me Take You to a Waterfall); or the surface of the sea in this exhibition at Sogn and Fjordane Art Museum. The textiles invite us to linger for a spell, in the moment.

Siegmund’s work points to modern man’s disconnection from nature. We orient ourselves daily through innovative technology and the use of  digitized social media, but the reality we experience is edited. What is the role of the world’s expanding digitalization, and is there a correlation to the state of our planet?

“The biophilia hypothesis suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems”.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesis)

Siegmund gathers impressions from nature, via photography, video, and sound and light studies, and uses them as pattern-making elements in the tapestry through digital weaving technology. The motif in this project is the sea in its varying states. The water’s surface formed by weather and tides - a synonym for our inner, emotional landscape. The sea can be calm and peaceful, or rough and impetuous.

Siegmund’s workshop is equipped with a hand-operated digital TC2 weaving machine, which enables her to weave images from video stills. They become patternmaking elements for the hubs, the organization of vertical and horizontal threads that make up a tapestry. The loom is hand-operated, making it possible for Siegmund to employ more challenging and alternative yarns and materials than possible with an automatically-operated, industrial weaving machine. The primary material in this exhibit is paper, upon which she draws with light, color, and pattern. Paper yarn is available in a variety of shapes and appearances, which helps contribute form and pattern to the theme of this project - the ocean’s surface. The organization of materials through the hubs creates a kind of dialogue between the materials used in the tapestry and gives life to an entirely new and unique language. Hand weaving is an important process in the artist’s material-based work. The tactile engages the senses more than sight alone. This interaction between the motif in the film and light projected onto the loom, and the patterns

and materials in the loom itself, creates an image in motion.

Siegmund’s goal is to explore a new idiom in which the materials’ form-giving and functional qualities, combined with electronic elements like light and sound, give the observer a sense of being embraced by a tapestry installation: a woven landscape that speaks to our senses.

Karina Siegmund (1979) lives and works in Stadlandet, Sogn og Fjordane. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and an education in textile design from Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. The artist has garnered great praise for her work and has participated in exhibits at home and abroad. In 2012 she exhibited at the Talente 2012 art fair in München and was awarded «The Talente Award for Best International Textile Art for emerging artists under the age of 33». Here at home, she has exhibited at the National Museum of Art in Oslo, Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum, and Vevringutstillinga, among others. // https://www.sfk.museum.no/en/biophilia-hypothesis-karina-siegmund