Maria VMier: „no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin“

Over the course of two weeks, a project by Maria VMier, an artist working between New York and Munich, will take place at Museum Brandhorst. Together with many companions, she interweaves research, texts, and objects with a textile intervention. A tent-like structure that she created with the textile artist Evelyn Sitter will occupy the center of Cy Twombly’s Roses Gallery.

Evelyn Sitter’s loosely woven and hand-dyed sheets play with the supposed violations of the rules of textile craftsmanship and enter into an exchange with the painterly gestures of VMier and Twombly. Within this symbolic space, VMier investigates the relationship of desire and power that exists between the institution and the marginalized local artist scene, as well as the possibilities of a community-building, erotic appropriation of the museum.

Maria VMier is an artist living and working in Munich and New York. Her multidisciplinary practice encompasses context-specific and collaborative work, as well as sculpture, painting and printmaking. In her works, she deals with the body and desire and the associated post-feminist, social, and political implications. Recurring motifs are the conditions of artistic labor, hospitality, care work, and community. The central site of form-finding is her ongoing “Companion” series, in which she creates large-format paintings on paper from writing movements.

Since 2013, VMier co-runs the publishing house for artists’ books Hammann von Mier-Verlag together with Stefanie Hammann, and since 2017 she has been collaborating with Leo Heinik and Jan Erbelding in the collective Ruine München. VMier was on the committee of the municipal art space FLORIDA Lothringer 13 from 2019 until 2022 and was also part of the exhibition jury of the BBK Munich and Upper Bavaria between 2017 and 2020. Her work has been shown at MoMA PS1, New York (2024), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2024), Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2024, 2022), BOAN Art Space, Seoul (2020), Lenbachhaus, Munich (2020), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2013), among others. Her work, whether solo or in collaboration, has been honored with numerous awards, including the Kunstförderpreis für Bildende Kunst Bayern and the FLAT Prize-CRT Art Foundation in Turin.

Evelyn Sitter works as a textile artist, designer, and professor in Berlin and Halle (Saale). In her studio practice, she uses a 19th century counter-march loom to produce large-scale weavings, which she paints simultaneously. All working steps are carried out by hand. Experimental deconstruction and the reversal of classic technical sequences guide her process and interweave questions of gender with hybrid craft technologies. The works are characterized by a play with open strands of yarn and the direct connection between weaving and painting processes, inviting visitors to tactile experiences.

Sitter studied fashion design at the UdK Berlin and worked for fashion and textile companies in Arnhem and Paris. In 2016, she founded her studio practice in Berlin with Atelier B8, where she combines collaborative and independent commissions with teaching activities at universities, schools and in museums’ art education spaces. She has been the Professor of Fashion Design at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle since 2022. From 2016 to 2022, she was an artistic assistant at the Institute for Experimental Fashion and Textile Design at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her work has been shown in museum exhibitions such as “original bauhaus – the centenary exhibition” (2019/2020), Bauhaus-Archiv in the Berlinische Galerie, as well as at design festivals such as the Collectible Design Fair, Dutch Design Week, and Beirut Design Week.