What does it mean to embrace something—or someone—without fully grasping it? In Klára Hosnedlová’s latest exhibition, embrace, on view at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin as part of the CHANEL Next Prize series, this question ripples through fabric, form, and time.
Hosnedlová’s work has long stood at the intersection of sculpture, performance, and craft, but embrace deepens the psychological register of her practice. Walking into the exhibition is like stepping into a frozen gesture—a moment mid-touch, mid-thought—where intimacy is both offered and withheld.
The room is quiet but charged. Earth-toned textiles stretch across armature-like frames. Embroidered figures—fragmented, faceless—emerge like half-remembered dreams. Hosnedlová’s signature stitching gives contour to ghostly bodies and domestic relics, turning fabric into a carrier of history and skin.
At the center is a new large-scale architectural installation: a kind of stage or shrine made of reflective glass and hand-worked fabric, inviting viewers to circle, peer, and pause. As you move, your own reflection flickers into the scene—blurring the boundary between observer and subject.
Material is memory here. Hosnedlová collects surfaces from abandoned modernist spaces across Central Europe, imprinting a forgotten past onto the present. Her embroidery evokes traditional craft, yet her figures remain unsettled—feminine but not soft, posed but not passive. There’s a kind of erotic tension without exposure. What’s intimate is what’s hidden.
The title embrace is deceptively gentle. There is warmth, yes—but also a haunting. A reckoning with personal and political disappearances: of touch, of place, of voice. The stitched and staged world of embrace asks: how do we make sense of what we’ve inherited? How do we hold it close—without letting it consume us?
For those of us drawn to the intersection of fashion, art, and body politics, Hosnedlová offers not just an aesthetic experience, but a meditative one. Her vision speaks to those who care about process, about what’s handmade, about stories that don’t scream for attention but leave a trace.
If you’re in Berlin this summer, make time for embrace—and let yourself linger.
On view at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
Exhibition dates: May 1 to October 26, 2025
Curated by Sam Bardaouil, Director Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart and Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Curator, Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
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