Ehrlich Steinberg is presenting Science and Worms, a solo exhibition by Tenant of Culture, the alias of Amsterdam-based Dutch artist Hendrickje Schimmel. This exhibition continues the artist's exploration of the lifecycle of fashion objects, focusing on the technology and mechanics of maintenance and care within fashion and institutional archives. Science and Worms is the artist's first solo show in the US at a commercial gallery and coincides with Host, the artist's first solo show at a US institution, taking place at the Contemporary Austin in Texas.
Trained in garment-making, Tenant of Culture addresses the conceptual and material realities of clothing and wearable objects in both historic and contemporary culture. The artist challenges the symbolic framework that treats fashion as a dematerialized and ephemeral phenomenon, emphasizing its role as a perpetual trend or style while ignoring the physical pressures of production and labor in the fashion industry. Fashion's systems of resource extraction, manufacturing, consumption, disposal, and decomposition are central to the artist's investigation. Tenant of Culture positions fashion objects between two "end scenarios": the first involves disintegration, where garments are discarded and potentially enter secondary markets before decaying in landfills or burning pits, while the second involves preservation, where garments are carefully archived as representations of specific cultural moments.
Drawing from Baudrillard's theory on the preservation and decay of cultural artifacts, Science and Worms examines how fashion and institutional archives halt the natural disintegration of garments, preserving them as static representations of their original form. The artist explores how varying value systems position fashion objects between disposable waste and archival cultural symbols, looking at how these values are mediated through both professional and amateur methods of preservation. While curators might use science-based conservation techniques, such as light and temperature-controlled environments, plastic covers, and supportive cushioning, consumers often rely on more improvised methods like plastic over shoes in rain, shrink wrapping, and moth bags.
A series of Tyvek garment bags, hand-sliced by the artist, are featured on the gallery walls. These bags, which are typically used to protect valuable clothing in fashion and museum archives, are rendered functionless. Through repetitive cuts, graphic t-shirts or sweaters become visible, displaying bold iconography such as "New York" or generic slogans. Using traditional stitching techniques, the artist fuses the bags and garments together. These mass-produced garments, not usually considered archival, are re-contextualized and stored in materials typically reserved for more valuable items.
In Receptacles, a series of shoe sculptures, Tenant of Culture further investigates the storage technologies used by fashion archives. By deconstructing and reconstructing archival systems designed to protect footwear, the artist incorporates these methods into the shoe designs. Cushions, typically used to protect shoes in boxes, become soles, while rubber shoe covers are wrapped around discarded shoes to form a boot. Stacked heel parts are protected by hand-stitched plastic covers. The artist's use of preservation materials as structural components turns the idea of preservation into a point of failure: each intervention sustains and negates the original object's purpose.
In the back gallery, Sabotage in Acrylic (series nr 3) addresses the trend of artificial distress in mass-produced fashion. A sweater, still tagged with Zara labels, features machine-made holes meant to imply years of wear. In contrast, Tenant of Culture has hand-restored the garment using darning, filling in the constructed holes. This piece highlights the contradictions within fashion's manipulation of time: while an industrial knitting machine can quickly produce "pre-worn" garments, the artist’s hand restoration process requires hours of meticulous work.
Tenant of Culture earned a BA in Womenswear from ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Zwolle in 2012 and an MA in Mixed Media from the Royal College of Art, London in 2016. The artist has exhibited at major institutions including Host at The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX (2025); IN SITU at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, BE (2023); and Soft Acid at Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2022), also featured at the British Textile Biennial in 2023. Other recent exhibitions include Insides Out at Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen, DE (2023); Beautiful Repair at Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen, DK (2023); Good Signal at Duarte Sequeira, Braga, PT (2023); Piece(d) Work at Ivory Tars, Glasgow, SCO (2022); Post-digital Intimacy at the National Gallery Prague, Prague, CZ (2022); Eternally Yours at Somerset House, London, UK (2022); and Testament at the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, UK (2022). Tenant of Culture’s work is in the collections of the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, NL; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL; and The Pier Arts Centre, Orkney, SCO.
Photos: Evan Walsh
