Sinaida Michalskaja

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025 Four Jacquard-woven cotton tapestries, stretchers 150 × 400 × 4 cm, in: NeuCöln, Cologne.

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025,
Four Jacquard-woven cotton tapestries, stretchers, 150 × 400 × 4 cm, in: Neu Cöln, Cologne.

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025,
Detail

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025,
in: Neu Cöln, Cologne.

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025,
Detail

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme), 2025, in: Neu Cöln, Cologne.

HANNAH (Deutsche Wärme) consists of four stretched, Jacquard-woven tapestries. The tapestries allude to the tradition of monumental portraiture, one usually reserved for political and spiritual leaders or pop stars but rarely afforded to intellectuals. Each depicts a different crop of Hannah Arendt’s smiling face. The crops are based on common photographic formats, and all use the same black-and-white portrait originally taken by Barbara Niggl Radloff at the first Kulturkritikerkongress in Munich in 1958. The outside edges of each portrait are lined with one of the colours of the German flag. Two of the tapestries are overlaid, placed one on top of the other, thereby allowing the smile to further extend into the space and enhance the impression of three-dimensionality.

Deutsche Wärme is planned as an ongoing project to engage with critical thinkers whose intellectual contributions and corporeal expressions challenge contemporary systems of authority.