Karoline Pöhn
Karoline Pöhn's work is an artistic-research practice at the intersection of textile art, material research, and embodied theory. She treats textile not as material but as a mode of thinking, a way of generating knowledge through touch, rhythm, and resistance. This yields the attitude of "softness as strength": remaining soft, touchable, and adaptable rather than letting rigid structures break one into hardness. Her installations and soft sculptures examine a world in which social constructs appear natural and unchangeable, producing exclusion and non-belonging. At the centre stands the question of which transformative forces make visible the contingency of such constructs, their made-ness, their changeability.
A central motive of her work is the NOBODYs: fragile yet strong, poetic bodies made from textile fragments that embody the invisible, the neglected and the unrepresented. Composed of industrial selvedges, the off-cuts and by-products of – but not exclusively – the textile industry, they address experiences of exclusion and invisibility that many people are familiar with. In this way, the NOBODYs simultaneously become EVERYBODYs: collective resonating bodies that demonstrate how strongly social belonging depends on visibility and the acceptance of difference. Appropriating this name meant to exclude them, and turning it into a space of unlimited possibilities and agency, is an act of liberation: the NOBODYs are not figures of powerlessness but of empowerment.
During her residency, Pöhn wants to expand the NOBODY series into a further cultural and material context. The residency enables an engagement with regional textile traditions and forms of collective memory, bringing the transcultural dimension of material, experience and social conditioning more sharply into focus. Through material research, story collection, sculptural development and literary work, new site-specific works will emerge. Material, space and language interrelate in a continuous artistic research journey.
Biography
Karoline Pöhn is a textile and mixed-media artist based in Linz, Austria. She studied Fashion & Technology (BA) and textile.arts.design (MA) at the University of Art and Design Linz. Her work focuses on underappreciated, domestic and industrial materials – particularly selvedges – to explore how identity, belonging and social structures take on material form. Her work has been recognized with awards such as the FORUM Alumni Prize 2025, the Edison – the Prize 2022 and the AFA Start Grant 2020, and she takes part in national and international residencies, solo and group exhibitions.
Recent exhibitions
| 2026 | Apart from two, three is the thing in the world, artist residency and exhibition with Selina Gasser, Haslach, AT Gangvitrine, solo exhibition, Die Kunstschaffenden, Linz, AT |
| 2025 | Weave Wave: Material Agencies in Motion, group exhibition, Central Slovak Gallery & Galérie FX, Banská Bystrica (Dec-Jan), SK The Space of Literature, an exhibition and dialogue with Károly Klimó, Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest (Dec-Jan), HU NOBODY EXHIBITS, solo exhibition and presentation of a master's thesis, Initiative Raumschiff, Linz, AT Zyklen, group exhibition, Galerie Monfregola, Basel, CH |
| 2024 | Grenzen(LOS), group exhibition, MARK – Association for Cultural and Social Work, Salzburg, AT The Sound I’d Like to Wear, costume Design, Performance & Visuals (Deep Space), Ars Electronica Linz, AT Am Beckenboden, group exhibition, Kulturpool Gusental, Gallneukirchen, AT Schlachthof Festival Traunsee, group exhibition, Traunkirchen – part of the Bad Ischl-Salzkammergut region, designated as the “European Capital of Culture” for 2024, AT |