Kyrah Klemme | Academie Minerva, Groningen
For an overview of available works please click the link below
KYRAH KLEMMEFor Best of Graduates 2026, Kyrah Klemme (Academie Minerva) presents a series of untitled textile works about how cultural memories and rituals get passed on within the Black community, and how they change or adapt. Often this happens through the women in families, grandmothers or mothers becoming the archivists and historians of culture, memories and knowledge. Klemme invited family members and friends to share experiences that were then turned into textile works. The themes explored are usually set in the domestic: hair care, food, and community gatherings amongst Black women. In her graduation exhibition she showed six textile pieces alongside three textile sound sculptures that visitors were able to pick up and listen to.
Untitled, 2025 | Cotton textile | 112 x 72 cm
Kyrah Klemme
One work was inspired by the ritual Klemme’s mother created when she was about 8 years old: every weekend her mother would sit her in the bathtub to teach her the ins and outs of detangling, conditioning and braiding her hair. With this piece she wanted to commemorate the connection, care and love they shared in those moments, the routine and ritual of hair care have always been a way to feel connected to her culture. While her textile work is primarily made with a fabric layering sewing technique, here the hair is hand-embroidered to make it the focal point, and the ray of water machine-embroidered.
Untitled, 2025 | Cotton textile and thread | 105 x 73 cm
Kyrah Klemme
Untitled, 2026 | Cotton textile, thread, embroidery | 120 cm x 85 cm
Kyrah Klemme
Untitled, 2026 | Cotton textile, thread, embroidery | 79 cm x 126 cm
Kyrah Klemme
Alongside the six textile pieces, Klemme exhibited three textile sound sculptures that visitors were able to pick up and listen to, soft embroidered objects such as a pillow marked Cassava Flour, echoing the ingredients from the suitcase story.
Untitled, 2026 | Sound sculpture (cotton textile, hand sewing and hand embroidery) | 21 cm x 16 cm
Kyrah Klemme
Untitled, 2026 | Sound sculpture (cotton textile, hand sewing and hand embroidery) | 15 x 13 cm
Kyrah Klemme
About the Artist
Kyrah Klemme’s (b. 2003, Berlin) textile art practice is deeply rooted in her cultural memories, stories and histories. Growing up between Nairobi and Berlin, her work explores the complex intersection of migration, culture, identity, race and gender, questioning how the disconnection from one’s culture influences or changes cultural memories and rituals.
Informed by the passing down of matrilineal knowledge within the Black community through craft, oral histories and care, she is drawn to the way traditions create space for intimacy, love, sharing knowledge and the passing down of cultural norms and values, and is interested in understanding who determines the preservation of cultural memories. She explores how seemingly mundane everyday practices, particularly in the domestic sphere, serve as sites for cultural remembrance, reimagining the domestic sphere as a bridge between experience, culture and geographies, connecting personal memories to broader collective experiences and political realities.
