Annika Thiems

Created for the solo exhibition ‘On wings (or almost)’, 'Pinstripe Upholstered Case with Four Cushions (2026)’ forms part of a new body of sculptural works by German textile artist Annika Thiems, developed in response to ‘Parapapillonneries (1976)’ by Méret Oppenheim. Engaging with Surrealism, psychoanalytic thought and the aesthetics of the absurd, Thiems reconsiders Oppenheim’s butterfly motif through the lens of contemporary sculpture and material practice. The work comprises a found wooden case, meticulously upholstered in pinstriped wool suiting fabric, containing four foam cushions. The symmetrical internal arrangement subtly echoes the bilateral structure of insect wings, introducing a tension between order and restraint. Domestic materiality and anthropomorphic suggestion converge, positioning the sculpture between object, body and container. At once precise and uncanny, the piece addresses themes of containment, functionality and latent tenderness. Thiems resists fixed interpretation, instead allowing dream logic, sensuality and the grotesque to coexist without didactic framing. Her upholstery techniques, learned in her family’s furniture workshop, operate as an inherited formal language through which pre-verbal and unconscious impulses are articulated. For collectors of contemporary sculpture, textile-based practice and post-Surrealist discourse, this work exemplifies Thiems’ distinctive synthesis of craft, conceptual rigour and psychological nuance.