BERLIN.- The Kunstgewerbemuseum at Berlin’s Kulturforum is presenting a major exhibition devoted to Sofie Dawo, an artist who pushed weaving beyond traditional ideas of craft and transformed textiles into autonomous, sculptural works.
Titled Sofie Dawo: Textile Experiments, the exhibition opens to the public on July 17, 2026, and remains on view through January 17, 2027. An opening event will take place on July 16 at 7 p.m. The presentation has been organized by the Kunstgewerbemuseum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in cooperation with Hans-Peter Jochum and Jett Rodgers.
Born in Saarland, Dawo developed an unconventional approach that treated destruction not as an end point, but as a creative method. She cut threads, scratched textile surfaces, damaged intact fabric and combined traditional fibers with materials such as metal, nylon and polyester.
Rather than concealing how a work had been made, Dawo allowed the process to remain visible. The physical manipulation of the material became part of the finished object, while accidents, irregularities and what she called “emerging surprises” were welcomed into the work.
Her textile pieces were not designed to serve a practical function. Nor did they fit comfortably within established definitions of either art or handicraft. Instead, they existed independently, shaped by the properties of the materials and the possibilities of weaving itself.
Dawo studied at the State School of Arts and Crafts in Saarbrücken from 1948 to 1952, beginning with fine art before turning to weaving. Among her teachers was Boris Kleint, who had studied in Berlin with Bauhaus master Johannes Itten and later served as his assistant.
Kleint was brought to Saarbrücken to establish a Bauhaus-inspired foundation course, an approach that likely had a lasting impact on Dawo’s understanding of form, material and experimentation.
After working as a textile designer, primarily on projects for public interiors, Dawo returned to the school in 1958 to lead its weaving and textile printing class. The institution, now part of the Saarland University of Applied Sciences, remained closely associated with her throughout her life.
Despite her important role in the development of postwar textile art, Dawo remained relatively overlooked for many years. From the 1960s onward, however, she helped free weaving from the expectation that it should reproduce an existing image, motif or narrative.
She rejected both figurative and abstract representation in favor of work that emerged directly from the material. Her textiles were guided by structure, tension, texture and the physical behavior of fibers rather than by a predetermined image.
This approach helped establish weaving as an independent artistic medium rather than a technique used simply to translate paintings or designs into fabric.
Dawo also insisted on being described as a textile artist, not as an artisan. Her work challenged assumptions about where art ended and craft began, and she deliberately broke with accepted rules of weaving.
Many of her pieces move beyond the flat surface and extend into space. Threads project outward, sections of fabric open up and materials gather into relief-like or three-dimensional forms. The resulting works function as textile sculptures rather than conventional wall hangings.
The exhibition brings together 22 works by Dawo, along with selected works on paper. Together, they provide a broad overview of her artistic development and the methods she used to test the limits of textile materials.
At the same time, the exhibition raises larger questions central to the Kunstgewerbemuseum: Where should the boundaries between art and craft be drawn? Who decides where those boundaries lie, and how do those definitions change over time?
Sofie Dawo: Textile Experiments is on view from July 17, 2026, through January 17, 2027, at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Kulturforum Berlin, Johanna-und-Eduard-Arnhold-Platz / Matthäikirchplatz. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
