Kathrin Marchenko | Beyond the Bridge

Kathrin Marchenko | Beyond the Bridge
| Contemporary Textile Art

“My work begins with thread, but I have never been interested in embroidery simply as decoration. I am interested in what happens when embroidery leaves the traditional textile surface and begins to occupy space.”
– Kathrin Marchenko

Kathrin Marchenko is a contemporary textile artist known for her distinctive hand embroidery on transparent tulle.
Working between Argentina and France, Marchenko has developed a visual language in which thread functions as a drawing material and embroidery moves beyond the traditional boundaries of textile craft. Her practice ranges from intimate studies to monumental works created to interact with architecture, light, and surrounding space.
The human figure is central to Marchenko’s work. Faces, hands, flowers, butterflies, and organic forms appear suspended on transparent surfaces, often accompanied by long, unfinished threads that extend beyond the embroidered image.

Transparency plays an essential role in her practice. Rather than using fabric as a conventional background, Marchenko works with tulle as an almost invisible structure. Light passes through the embroidery, and the surrounding environment remains visible, allowing each work to change with the space in which it is installed.
Her work explores transformation, vulnerability, memory, intimacy, the body, and the relationship between fragility and resilience.

By bringing the slow, intimate process of hand embroidery into a contemporary, large-scale context, Marchenko approaches thread as a medium for drawing, painting, and creating images in space.

“Transparent tulle allows me to construct an image without separating it from its surroundings. There is almost no background. Light passes through the work, architecture remains visible behind it, and shadows become part of the composition. The image changes depending on where and how it is installed.”
– Kathrin Marchenko

Marchenko’s large-scale works transform the intimate language of hand embroidery into an immersive visual experience.

Created primarily with thread on transparent tulle, the works exist between textile, drawing, painting, and installation.

Portraits and human gestures emerge from dense networks of stitches while other areas remain almost completely transparent. Long threads frequently escape from the image, revealing the physical construction of the work and preventing the composition from becoming visually closed.

The surrounding environment therefore becomes part of each piece. Walls, light, shadows, and architecture remain visible through the tulle and alter the appearance of the embroidery.

Across these works, Marchenko repeatedly explores states of transition. Figures appear to grow, fracture, dissolve, or transform. Flowers emerge from bodies, butterflies obscure eyes, and embroidered lines continue beyond the boundaries of the figure.

The works are not intended to conceal their construction.
Instead, the thread itself remains visible as both material and image.

BROKEN HISTORY

Alongside her individual textile practice, Marchenko has developed a series of collaborative objects with artist Artashes Sardarian.

The collaboration allows embroidery to move beyond tulle and interact with sculptural materials including metal and vintage porcelain.
Rather than functioning as a separate direction from Marchenko’s wider practice, these works extend many of the same ideas into three-dimensional form: transformation, fragmentation, memory, vulnerability, and reconstruction.

Broken History is a collaborative series by Kathrin Marchenko and Artashes Sardarian, using vintage porcelain, embroidery, tulle, thread, and gold.
Instead of concealing the history and imperfections of found objects, the artists make them visible.

Cracks and fractures become part of the composition. Gold emphasizes rather than disguises damaged areas, while embroidered eyes, butterflies, flowers, and threads introduce a new visual layer into objects that already carry traces of another time.

The original object is therefore neither restored nor erased. Its previous history remains visible while another history is added.
The series considers repair as transformation rather than an attempt to return something to its original state.

Website: kathrinmarchenko.com / artashessardarian.com
Instagram: @kathrin_marchenko / @artashes_sardarian