With her CHANEL Commission at Hamburger Bahnhof, embrace sees Klára Hosnedlová knitting raw flax, hemp, and cast glass into vast, hand-woven stories and sculptural reliefs that talk with the museum’s brutalist bones. Drawing on Czech New Wave cinema and generational memory, she creates intimate, meditative landscapes that visitors are free to travel through – no barriers, no hierarchy – transforming the gallery into a lived environment. Through this fusion of fragile, organic materials and monumental forms, Hosnedlová redefines exhibition space as a dynamic interplay of history, nature, and human scale.
hube: You transitioned from painting to embroidery during your studies, seeking a more meditative process. How has this shift influenced your artistic expression and the themes you explore?
Klára Hosnedlová: At the time I started working with embroidery in art school, embroidery was not considered an art form per se; it was rather viewed as a technique used in the textile industry or as a domestic activity. This is why I didn’t feel the pressure and felt more freedom in my practice. But it is a choice of medium rather than a choice of content. It is a lonely and slow activity, which matches my need for intimacy.
h: Your installations often draw from modernist and brutalist architecture. What captivates you about these styles, and how do they shape the environments you create?
KH: Brutalist architecture is radical in its harshness and heaviness. Because of that, I can create a soft environment that directly communicates with it. I can compensate for its strong, masculine character with fragile, organic, more feminine elements. I like working with contrasts.
h: embrace is the inaugural project for the CHANEL Commission at Hamburger Bahnhof. How has this collaboration influenced the scope and realisation of your installation?
KH: I was officially informed of this partnership in December 2024, but I had been working on the project for about a year, so all the conception and a major part of the production were already in an advanced state by then. This collaboration is an agreement between CHANEL and Hamburger Bahnhof, the details of which I don’t personally know. I worked on this project independently and had the privilege of realising the artworks and final installation exactly as I had imagined from the beginning.
h: What inspired you to explore themes of home, utopia, and daily life under various political systems for embrace?
KH: My direct inspiration for this exhibition isn’t science fiction but Czech New Wave cinema (from the 1960s/1970s), especially scenes from František Vláčil’s Markéta Lazarová and The Valley of the Bees. Both films are set in the Middle Ages and evoke not only the inner emotions and desires of their characters but also speak to a broader human brutality and the enduring presence of myths. I see them as universal tales, yet they’re set in beautiful natural surroundings, close to naturalism. I’m intrigued by trans-generational knowledge passing and inheritance – how history and its events impact (or don’t impact) how people live at a certain time: how they think, behave, and what endures across time, transferring to the next generations.