18TH INTERNATIONAL TRIENNIAL OF TEXTILE

 

18th International Triennial of Textile Lódz 2025

11.10.2025-12.04.2026

On October 11, 2025, the 18th International Triennial of Textile will open at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź – the largest and oldest event in the world dedicated to contemporary textile art. This year’s edition has a special significance: the Triennial is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and over half a century, it has established itself as one of the most important forums for artistic dialogue across borders.

This year’s theme, “Deconstruction/Reconstruction,” reflects the tensions and transformations of the contemporary world – both socially and culturally. It is a theme that not only addresses current issues – the redefinition of norms, value systems, and identities – but also engages with a broader philosophical discourse. After all, deconstruction can be understood as a way of critically reading reality, opening the field for new narratives.

Textile as a Indicator of Change

From the very beginning, the Łódź Triennale has acted as a sensitive indicator of change – both in art and in the wider world. Organized since the 1970s, it has provided a space for artists from all over the globe to connect. Today, in an era of new political and social tensions, textiles underscore their significance as a medium that most fully tells stories about communities, memory, migration, the role of women, identity, and the search for a new order.

The materiality of textiles – both intimate and communal – proves to be an ideal language for discussing global issues. As the works submitted to this year’s Triennial demonstrate, deconstruction and reconstruction are not only artistic processes but also metaphors for the contemporary world: from redefining the notion of home through migratory experiences to women’s emancipation and building inclusive communities.

50 Years in Dialogue with the World

The International Textile Triennial was initiated by the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź and, since 1975, has brought together creators from all over the world. Each edition showcases the latest developments in textile art while also reflecting how society, culture, and artistic language evolve.

Every new edition reveals diverse perspectives and increasingly tackles challenging topics. As a result, the exhibition is always a presentation of artistic exploration and a space for exchanging experiences, reflections, and shared narratives about contemporary life.

CENTRAL MUSEUM OF TEXTILES IN ŁÓDŹ
282 Piotrkowska St. *
93 - 034 Łódź
Poland

Wednesday – 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Thursday–Saturday – 12:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
Sunday – 12:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

Paul's House at Konteksty Festival of Ephemeral Art in Sokołowsko

Paul's House

at Konteksty Festival of Ephemeral Art in Sokołowsko, Poland

Curated by Marta Czyż 

Friday, July 18 2025, 18:30 

The performance Paul's House by Philipp Gufler explores who owns the memory and history of artist Paul Hoecker (1854–1910). After having been almost entirely forgotten for over a century, the performance stresses the urgency to celebrate his work and legacy in Poland and Germany. 

Paul Hoecker was an influential, long overlooked figure in the Munich art scene around 1900. As a painter, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and co-founder of the Munich Secession, he was active in a phase of fundamental upheaval at the interface of tradition and modernism. After international success through his participation in the first three Venice Biennales and the World's Fair in Chicago, a scandal forced him to resign from his professorship in 1897 - caused by homophobic rumours about a painting of the Virgin Mary for which a male sex worker was the model. In the following years, he lived in self-imposed exile in Italy, on Capri and in Rome, before returning to his birthplace of Oberlangenau (now Długopole Górne) in Silesia in 1901.

Together with Stefan Gruhne, Nicholas Maniu and Christina Spachtholz, Philipp Gufler is part of the Paul Hoecker Research Group at the self-organized Forum Queeres Archiv München since 2019. One aim of the research group is to draw attention to Paul Hoecker's work and life outside Germany, particularly in his birthplace, today's Poland. Paul Hoecker immortalised his birthplace in several paintings. In April 2025, Philipp Gufler visited the Hoecker-House. 

Paul's House describes the life and work of Paul Hoecker as a shared German-Polish queer history. At the Konteksty Festival in Sokolowsko near Długopole Górne, Philipp Gufler will be showing a performance about his artistic exploration of Paul Hoecker's birthplace.

 

Photos: Marcela Paniak & Tomek Ogrodowczyk, Kazimierz Ździebło

An Invitation to Indulge, solo exhibition at BWA Warszawa

 

Philipp Gufler

AN INVITATION TO INDULGE

Opening, Friday, November 29 from 5 to 9 p.m. 

On view till January, 25, 2025. 

Philipp Gufler (born in Germany in 1989) delves into the history of Germany, The Netherlands and beyond, using his research to create works composed of pigment-spattered mirrors. Rectangular, triangular, square, these forms are reminiscent of the recognizable modernist shapes in the paintings of Frank Stella. Repetitive, geometric divisions into fields of color emanate a sense of calm and dignity. At times, it’s just color, or rather the material the pigment was drawn from, that is queerying our thought process, twisting the realm of pure abstraction into a narrative inspired by real-life events.

Is it not a carnation, whose pink essence covers the surface of such a mirror, a Wildesque symbol of cruising around the city in search of a partner? Can we talk about the suffering of the LGBTQ+ community without including pink triangles, which were the shapes the Nazis made gay people sew into their clothing at concentration camps during the Third Reich? These motifs set Gufler’s mirrored works into the queer context in a fascinating way, opening doors to the increasingly crowded room marked “Queer Art.” In Poland, it’s a novel moment. In this context, it’s worth mentioning the conceptual project by Karol Radziszewski Invisible (History of Belarussian Queerness) which comprises a series of purposely overexposed images, arranged as black squares on a white background. These images portray events from the lives of gay Belarussians in Communist Minsk. There’s also his “Flag” series, which references the Olympic symbol. Gufler goes one step further, launching a game onto the field of modernist art, whereby the mirror image is a symbol of relativity. This convention has been expertly applied in the past by the likes of Andy Warhol and Michelangelo Pistoletto in the west, and Edward Krasiński in Poland.

Gufler’s mirrored reflections are suffused with pigment, so they no longer depict their subject in a direct way. Instead, the vibrant mix of colors, cut up with slashes of more color, mar their reflections, just like gossip and lies mar the facts of life. The world in these mirrors is radically different from the one we know.

An Invitation to Indulge stands as an appendix of sorts to Gossipmongers (a group show bringing together Philipp Gufler, Karol Radziszewski and Jaanus Samma). A piece of gossip may often be the only bit of information we are afforded about an event, which doesn’t quite fit into the main narrative, primarily because it refers to an excluded group: for instance, women, immigrants, queer people. The archaeology of collective LGBTQ+ memory is based on detailed accounts tucked away in private archives. These documents are often coded, to disguise them from the prying eyes of society, who have the power to ostracize and censure, blurring out everything that is outside of the bounds of the heterosexual norm. And yet, don’t the histories written by heterosexual men through the ages also bend the truth, twist the facts to create a binary, black-and-white image of the world, with no room for shades of gray? Perhaps the queer-infused vision of the world conjured by Philipp Gufler isn’t so unrealistic as some might think. Perhaps a closer look would in fact bring us closer to the truth?

Photo: Julika Rudelius and Bartosz Zalewski

BWA WARSZAWA
ul. Marszałkowska 34/50/666
00-554 Warsaw

Tuesday - Friday
12 - 7 p.m.
Saturday noon - 4 p.m.