Frauke Wilken - Cocooning

For this winter refuge for citrus plants, the artist has designed a large-scale fabric installation that, through its materiality, creates imagery that is both sensual and peculiar.

The textile sculptures hang suspended from the ceiling; sewn together with rough stitches, they carry within them something hidden and mysterious. The bulging forms and the seam lines reminiscent of scars lend the installation a biomorphic character: like a skin, the fabric encloses the interior that gives the sculpture its form.

In conjunction with the exhibition title “cocooning,” the site-specific work evokes the impression of entering the habitat of mystical creatures in the midst of a metamorphic process. While the caterpillar retreats into its cocoon to emerge as an imago, as a completed “image,” the title, through its subjectivizing verb form, also refers to the social phenomenon of “cocooning,” the retreat into the domestic sphere. Does this period of rest, then, lead to unfolding or to complete isolation? Frauke Wilken dedicates her artistic practice to the exploration of organic forms that repeatedly take on anthropomorphic traits, at times unsettling, at times conciliatory.

The fragmentary nature of her work—the assembled scraps, held together by recurring seams that occasionally tear under the weight of the burden—treats the body as a battleground for individual and social conflicts. Despite its sometimes grotesque appearance, however, the resilience of the body remains at the forefront: battered and wounded, it bears and endures, in a state of constant flux, all the hardships imposed upon it.

About the artist:

Frauke Wilken (*1965 in Göttingen) has lived and worked in Cologne since 1992. After studying fine art at the Braunschweig University of Art under Hans-Peter Zimmer, she has worked across media in the fields of sculpture, photography, and drawing. Her works have been shown in numerous national and international exhibitions, including at the Kunstmuseum Bochum, the Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg, the Museum Centre Pasquart Biel (Switzerland), and most recently at the Kunsthalle Memmingen. In addition to her artistic practice, she has taught at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences and, since 2012, at the Melanchthon Academy in Cologne.

Exhibition opening

on Friday, June 19, 2026, at 6 p.m. in the Kleine Orangerie at Charlottenburg Palace

Welcome

Heike Schmitt-Schmelz | District Councilor

Barbara Höffer | Municipal Gallery Berlin

Introduction

Dr. Ralf F. Hartmann | Art Historian

• Exhibition Dates: June 20 to August 22, 2026
• Hours: Tue–Sun 10:00 AM–6:00 PM