Marie Schumann

Coatings

January 9, 2026–January 3, 2027

Marie Schumann (*1991, lives and works in Zurich) transforms the main staircase of the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen into an artistic space for perception. She stretches high-tech fabrics over a fine metal framework, lining the path like permeable skins. The fabric panels react to light and movement, opening and narrowing the space and allowing visitors to experience the staircase as a body that changes as they walk. It shows how textiles shape boundaries, moods, and relationships in space. Schumann understands textiles as a medium that moves between body and architecture.

Coatings refers to enveloping as a textile element that wraps itself around a structure, softening it and creating an intimate relationship. Here, the masonry envelope turns inward, opening up. The slight bulging of the fabric panels creates moments of snuggling—as if the wall itself were moving forward to make contact. The textile material becomes a physical membrane that conveys closeness, protection, and touch at the same time. The installation also ties in with the textile industry in Eastern Switzerland. In collaboration with TISCA Tischhauser, Schumann uses the Jacquard loom not for decorative patterns, but for artistic experimentation: she “hacks” the digital weaving process, shifts parameters, and provokes moments in which the warp and weft deliberately drift apart. This results in fabrics that are less functional than sculptural—textile surfaces that develop a physical presence. Coatings makes this material-oriented research visible and invites visitors to perceive the architecture of the museum as something physical, soft, and mobile.

With generous support from the Zürcherischen Seidenindustrie Gesellschaft (Zurich Silk Industry Association), Zurich, and Tisca Tischhauser, Bühler.