Katharina Büttgen

Belarus / GermanyBUNA+

Biography

Katharina Büttgen works with textiles, drawing, and photography. Her practice addresses cultural memory, identity, and repression, drawing on textile materials and traditional Belarusian patterns. She lives in Karlsruhe and studied Fine Arts at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, as well as Art and Philosophy at the University of Cologne. Her work has appeared in international solo and group exhibitions.

Archive records · BUNA vol.3 / 2025

Threads of Memory, 2022-2025 Textile, photography, lithography, and cyanotype Eight works; dimensions vary

BUNA+

The exhibition ‘Threads of Memory’ is dedicated to the question of how identity is negotiated in the context of migration, political repression and personal loss - and what role textile practices can play as carriers of memory, resistance and cultural continuity. As an artist with a Belarusian migration history, I process the ruptures, ambivalences and violent attributions associated with my origins in my work. The protests in Minsk, which I witnessed in 2020, marked a central turning point: the hope for freedom and collective self-determination was brutally crushed - with far-reaching consequences for individual and collective concepts of identity.