Trümmermaschinen, 2023

Foraged rubble, second-hand textiles and hardware, powerpoint presentation.

Dimensions variable.

Sophia Borowska is an artist and weaver based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada. Her project at GlogauAIR investigates Berlin women’s material-salvaging practices in building and clothing post World War II. During this period, the mythologized Trümmerfrauen (rubble-women) cleared debris and salvaged reusable building materials from the wreckage of the city. More overlooked, the Heimarbeiterinnen (home-based garment workers), created patchwork clothing out of severely limited materials like curtains, uniforms, and rags. Through research, photography, and sewing, Sophia offers a feminist revision of the social contexts and power structures under which these women labored. This work considers how urban renewal and fashion can become modes of hope but also forgetting.

Walking around with a shopping trolley, Sophia foraged for rubble from the surfaces of Trümmerbergs: Berlin’s park hills constructed on mounds of rubble. Combining this debris with second-hand home textiles and hardware, speculative “rubble-clearing machines” began to develop.