Bettina Willnauer has been working in the tufting workshop on a series of work, inspired by the poetry of Tove Ditlevsen. Not in a dark or melancholic tone, but through a reflective lens, similar to how Ditlevsen portrayed ordinary life with sharp emotional insight.
March 2026
I use tufting to explore questions such as: Who am I? Who will I be? How do I see myself? How do others see me?
The self-portrait has been a central motif in art for centuries—a way for artists to explore, not only how they appear to the world, but also how they experience themselves from within.
I see this series as part of that tradition, but filtered through a contemporary, textile-based language, rooted in my own life.
My process involves working with various pile heights, wool lengths, and yarn thicknesses to create depth and texture across several pieces
simultaneously. This hands-on, exploratory method is central to refining my formal language. The SVFK tufting facilities are essential to this
practice—both in terms of scale and the unique workflow they enable.
