Soft-Art Scenarios

You all know Lewis Carroll´s “Alice in Wonderland.”  Remember the big tea table and the Mad Hatter and his guests engaged in endlessly repetitive conversation?
Similar things happen to my curious, wrinkled and wondrous figures in seemingly every-day situations: the tables bend under the weight of the delicacies of velvet and silk; only the eye of the beholder can be satisfied, because all objects are caught in the strictures of time.

My tableaux need no animation.  The still-lifes have enough soul to stimulate the viewer´s imagination who, irritated and amused, discovers a plethora of hidden meanings.  The comical and contradictory is always of essence.  At second sight everything that at first appeared “real” and “alive” turns into a “sewn” provocation.

Twenty-two years ago I created the first full-sized textile figures (a rather surrealistic wedding party) and realized then that I had discovered my means of self-expression.

In the following years this turned into a kind of life-long project.  My collection is still growing and at the moment consists of no fewer than 60 artistic humans and thousands of hand-sewn objects required for the different settings – all unique and of my own design and creation.

If you will, it is a gigantic dollhouse full of strange creatures sewn of fabric, but far removed from “idyllic needlework.”  Soft, vulnerable, feminine.

The preference of soft materials perhaps explains my predilection for cooking and eating:  soft dough – soft material, whereby the fate of the “ordinary” meal is a foregone conclusion:  it disappears, is digested.  The SEWN delicacies, however, remain – even after years – intact and appetizing.

The time aspect of these works dominates:  my figures do not GROW old, they ARE old!  I am often asked:  Why do you prefer old people?  Because, I answer, they obviously have soul and personality.

There are plans for some time in the future to open a museum for my creations.

For the near future, however, these figures and their paraphernalia will continue to travel to exhibits in museums and shop windows of upscale stores and will be rented for events.  They will remain passers-by there, hopefully as a balance to banality.

Stefanie-Alraune Siebert