Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. Image Courtesy of Thomas Bruns.
CHANEL has long been a cultural force, shaping femininity in the 1950s through Coco Chanel’s revolutionary designs. Today, the house continues its legacy of blending fashion with art, solidified by a three-year partnership between the CHANEL Culture Fund and Hamburger Bahnhof.
Once a 19th-century train station, the museum’s vast 2,500-square-meter hall still echoes its past—a space defined by transformation and movement. This sense of evolution sets the stage for the first major project of the collaboration: the CHANEL Commission at Hamburger Bahnhof.
Klára Hosnedlová. Image Courtesy of Vitali Gelwich.
From May 1 to October 26, artist Klára Hosnedlová reimagines the historic hall with embrace, her largest institutional solo exhibition to date. Merging past and present, the space is reconfigured into an immersive utopian landscape—responding to the museum’s architectural structures while pushing their boundaries. Nine-meter-high tapestries, site-specific objects, organic reliefs, and monumental embroideries come together in an evocative dialogue between material and memory.
Expanding on motifs central to her practice, embrace also incorporates film and video recordings of performative interventions staged in Berlin—bringing a new dimension to Hosnedlová’s world.
Klára Hosnedlová, Performance in Berlin, 2024. Image Courtesy of Klára Hosnedlová.
Hamburger Bahnhof and the CHANEL Commission are joining forces to explore the complexities of contemporary life within the historic hall. This exhibition, the first CHANEL Commission, is not just a beginning but a continuation of CHANEL’s enduring dialogue as a cultural leader, bridging the past, present, and future.