Katharina Spitz

Black Sheep

@kathakathak

Location

amsterdam / The Netherlands

University

Berlin University of Arts (UDK)

Graduation year

2021

Main Manufacturing Countries

netherlands

Contact

Katharina Spitz is an Amsterdam based Designer and Dressmaker. She has a great passion for hourlong handiwork, contemplating the human body, and the knitting and untangling of the social fabric in matter, form and spirit. In 2013 she made her rite de passage into the world of dressmaking as an apprentice at Pio O'kan Couture in Düsseldorf; after which she Emancipated herself as an autonomous fashion designer at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) where she graduated at the Institute for experimental Textile and Fashion Design in October 2021. Her passion for crafting and dressmaking remains a key component within her artistic practice. Fashion is for her first of all a way of being in the world: it interprets and shapes our social networks and ultimately our position in space and time. Through critical intellectual, personal and material engagement with the world around her she seeks ways in which her designs, performances and dressmaking can open up new perspectives and ways of being in a world that is suffering from pollution, misogyny, inequality and deep-seated alienation. In her 2021 collection "Play harder" she for example questions the strained relation between work and play in modern western societies. Another example is her 2020 collection "In the Face of Loss" in which she reconsiders the relation between mortality, womanhood and crafting. Collaboration is key in her design practice, so is spontaneity as well as precision, playfulness and sincerity.

VITA:

// Design Residency Fonds for Young Design, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg // apr. 2023 – oct.2023

// Marlou Breuls Creative Studio (House of Rubber), Studiomanager and Designer // jan. 2022 – apr. 2023

// costume design for Sean Hannan’s work ‘LUCK’ exhibited at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, When things are beings // 11. 2022

// textile crafting advise and making of textile sculpture ‘head of medusa’ by Susanna Inglada, exhibited at Papertrails Kunstlinie, Almere, // oct. 2022 - jan. 2023

// Marlou Breuls Creative Studio // Design Intern // sep. 2020 – feb. 2021

// Student at Berlin University of the Arts [Udk], Institute for experimental Textile and Fashion Design // BA Fashion Design // sep. 2017 – oct. 2021

// Tutor at Berlin University of the Arts [Udk], Institute for experimental Textile and Fashion Design // teaching dressmaking and design implementation // sep. 2019 – mrt. 2021

// womenswear dressmaker at Dutch National Opera Amsterdam, crafting the soloists costumes // mrt. 2017 – jul.2017

// artisanal skills, developed during a three year apprenticeship at Pio O‘kan Couture, Düsseldorf, an
Haute Couture salon for exclusive high-end womenswear. // sep. 2013 – aug. 2016

Latest Collection

Forget Me Not

Memory cultures show us how societies represent themselves and how they want to be remembered. Forget Me Not asks with which intention and what sort of objects a culture shapes its own memory and legacy. The body of work consists of textile works with unusual material properties: ceramic body parts that appear to be knitted, crochet textiles and softly knitted wool fabrics. ‘Forget Me Not’ reveals differences between how objects cultivate our memory. There are, for example, personal objects, like a knotted hair brooch to commemorate a loved one. But also objects that express the memory cultures of societies that try to overcome their own mortality through static self-representation. This tension is used by Spitz as a starting point for her own fashion designs, in which she explores the possibility of a transformative memory culture. Transience should, according to Spitz, no longer be conceived of a threat. She invites us to reflect upon existing memory cultures from a feminist and material-oriented perspective.

As the 6th Resident of the Fonds for Young Design Programm of Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen I was invited to develop a new work and exhibition for MK&G Hamburg.

The exhibition Forget Me Not and the purchase of a whole body of work by Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen for the MK&G collection marks a milestone within my artistic practice. I am very grateful for the opportunity.

In the exhibition “Forget Me Not” at the MK&G, the designer explores varied forms of memory culture – ranging from monuments to personal symbolic trinkets to dynamic textile objects – to question why and how we choose to hold onto certain memories. She makes the ambivalences inherent in the forms taken by such tokens of remembrance visible by combining opposing fabric properties and thus creating an ambiguous materiality: Ceramic imprints of body parts recalling the striving for immortality embodied by antique marble busts are encased in finely spun thread; crocheted textiles and flowing wool fabrics propose an abstract alternative to the “knot in the handkerchief”; and delicate forget-me-not embroidery is nearly absorbed by black velvet. “I plead for a mobile, social form of memory that embraces impermanence, as opposed to a society that tries to manifest itself as eternal through its commemorative objects, resisting the passage of time and mortality,” the designer explains.

Previous collections

Play Harder

In the Face Of Loss

Another myth of eternal Sameness

Latest Collection

Forget Me Not

Previous collections

Play Harder

In the Face Of Loss

Another myth of eternal Sameness