Studio Visit with Lena Marie Emrich

What role does your studio play for you as a creative workspace?

I spent a lot of time recently in Brussels and Paris, gathering inspiration and developing my research, and this year also took me to the Staatstheater in Cottbus, which opened another layer of my practice. But the anchor for my production is still my father’s sign-making company in Göttingen. It’s where the technical side of the work actually happens and where I go to test materials, work at scale, and refine each piece. This transgenerational collaboration keeps the work grounded and pushes it forward in ways I couldn’t create on my own, and it brings me back to the sense of tenderness and attention that sits at the core of my practice.

What are you currently working on, and which themes or concepts are central to it?

I’m exploring how tenderness can steady us when the boundaries between the digital and the analog blur, offering a brief sense of orientation in a tempo that rarely matches our own. I see tenderness as a form of resistance, a way of slowing down, paying attention, and staying present in moments that usually dissolve into noise. It is a method as much as a mood. The mirror edition presented here is the first small teaser of the upcoming project. It gently disrupts our perception, while the engraved handwriting evokes a soft nostalgia that soothes, anchors, and quietly opens the door to tenderness.

For the upcoming institutional solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Osnabrück in 2026, I’m developing a new body of work that builds on the conceptual foundation of The Darkest Corners, first shown in Venice. Rather than continuing the earlier cycle, this new chapter shifts into a different atmosphere shaped by the building’s corridor-like architecture. I’m interested in how transitional spaces can be reinterpreted as zones of encounter, sharp perception, and a kind of childlike curiosity.

Are there new developments or experiments in your practice that you find particularly exciting?

Lately I’ve been experimenting more with engraving techniques in glass and other materials, and I’m planning to deepen my experience with steel balancing the fragile and the brutal. I’ll spend early next year at the Las Cicadas Artist Residency in Ibiza to develop this direction further, and I’m excited that some of the pieces made there will be shown with OFFICE IMPART at Art Brussels in Spring 2026.

I’m also continuing my work with marquetry in natural acrylic stone, using different colours of the material together with wood inlays to expand the crafted and three-dimensional side of the pieces. The CNC-cut echos the industrial present, yet the finished work feels surprisingly analog, almost hand-carved. It’s a mix of digital precision and a physical presence that quietly pushes back against it.

The new series looks at gestures in public space that usually stay hidden or unspoken. I’m interested in moments that sit somewhere between vulnerability and defiance, small actions that briefly interrupt the social script for a second. Turning these quick situations into a material that feels solid and lasting gives them a quiet weight without revealing the narrative too directly. 

This connects to the BRACE BRACE photographs with Bianca LeeVasquez, where the body folds into positions we know but will likely never perform. As Estelle Hoy writes, they show her “breathing in chaosmic spasms, ” rehearsing gestures of survival we hope never to need. I tend to choose a hyper-aesthetical visual language to prevent harm and instead create a sense of beauty within uncertainty.