17 May 2026 through 6 January 2027

Under the title of »Notes in the Margin«, the fashion designer Monika Markert and the photographer Silke Helmerdig showcase fashion and photography in the foyer of the Reuchlinhaus. Fashion is located somewhere between aesthetics and functionality, tradition and modernity, life and experience. The exhibits feature recurrent, decorative and/or festive elements of traditional costume from different cultures, juxtaposed with contemporary accents. The decorative attributes of the garments, such as pleats, fringes, shiny fabrics, high-quality materials like silk or wool, correlate with the respective wearer’s appearance and their traditional hairstyles including braids, long, loose hair or upswept hairdos. The goal is to adorn and to allow the beauty of each individual wearer to unfold. The exhibits present themselves as an aesthetic symbiosis of life experiences gained and our perception of the visually constantly changing world we live in. The compositions have been created by adopting shapes and patterns from our everyday lives and reinterpreting them. They are deliberately reduced to mere parts of a garment, to »textile notes«. This reduction lends the combination of modernity and tradition, of pragmatism and adornment a powerful expressiveness, facilitating a dialogue between the elements in the room, the photos displayed in relation to the clothes, and the architecture of the iconic exhibition venue. The exhibition is not intended to represent a finished process. Its process-oriented character enables the further development of an idea, up to a functional piece of clothing.