Selma Alihodžić / STUDIO MÆRZ
Both an elegy and a celebration, the spatial installation Phantom Ornaments invites a conversation about Swiss textile heritage and its transformation.
The poetic installation reimagines Switzerland’s embroidery tradition, once a driving force of innovation in the textile industry and a cornerstone of economic prosperity. Composed from audio recordings of historic Swiss embroidery machines, the work allows historical embroidery motifs to re-emerge in a new form — immaterial, in constant motion, and unfolding in dialogue with embroidery, silk fabrics, and projections.
Almost two hundred years after the first industrial embroidery machines began operating in Switzerland, Selma Alihodžić opens a dialogue on Swiss embroidery traditions, weaving together architecture, design, and textiles: between craftsmanship and code, history and the future, silence and recurrence. Phantom Ornaments pays tribute to a fading industry while positioning embroidery as a continuously evolving and radiant medium. As a ghostly continuation of human skill and artistry, thread is transformed into sound and light.
A spatial experience that weaves meaning between the material and the immaterial, the installation reveals the social and economic forces that once propelled groundbreaking innovations in textile design, while showing how these forces can continue to inspire new forms today.
The research for this project began during an artist residency with the Textile and Design Alliance and developed into an installation that connects embroidery traditions across Europe and Asia. In collaboration with the Textile Museum St. Gallen, the Saurer Museum Arbon, and individual craftspeople, Alihodžić catalogued patterns from both traditional hand embroidery and historic machine embroidery, bringing together craftsmanship and emerging technologies. From this archival research, she developed her own new code-based design language to honour embroidery traditions across time and place.
Program:
10. September, 18:00
Opening
11.–27. September
Ausstellung
13. September, 14:00