Das Haus der Höschen: Talk, Präsentation & Lesung mit Olivia Seiling und Olga Hohmann

In the organizer's words:

The "House of Panties" is back in the foyer of the Hansa Library. For the second time it is called "Reading in panties". To mark the official opening of the exhibition, we would like to invite you to a matinee with a reading by Olga Hohmann and the presentation of the first publication from the "Haus der Höschen".

The "Haus der Höschen" is a project by the artist Olivia Wilhelmine Seiling.
It now comprises over 1,700 small paper underpants made from art world waste paper. And it continues to grow.

"The "House of Panties" is somewhere between the most intimate and the most public. In a way, the Höschen institution relativizes this apparent contradiction - and establishes a contradictory relationship to the question of scale. Magnification and diminution, trivialization and frightening seriousness become indistinguishable. Nothing is formulated, legible or recognizable as a whole - everything is found in the one form, which is simply that of the very profane "underpants"," writes Olga Hohmann.

The exhibition can be seen from April 12, 2026 to May 3, 2026 in the Hansa Library.

Olivia Wilhelmine Seiling (*1972 in NRW) studied fine art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Münster and was a master student of sculptor Joachim Bandau. In her work, she fabricates short circuits and hybrid beings. She draws psychological and physical states. She questions the world of commodities, reads the sweaty palms of esotericism and puts her finger in the worn-out nicks of high culture. Seiling's paper objects combine formal precision and conceptual depth and pose questions about the role of the artist and the significance of art today. The paper panties come in large swarms and depict art history and artistic contemporaneity in both a good and a doubtful sense. There is a rustling through the fig leaf forest. Panty Rhei!

Olga Hohmann writes essays, prose miniatures and meandering texts that are meant to be read aloud. In an almost musical form, she combines more or less fictional narratives with found material, which combine to form a rhythmic murmur. Slogans, aphorisms and flashes of thought become hierarchically equivalent.
She has recently performed at the Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster, the Schinkel Pavillon Berlin, the Julia Stoschek Foundation Düsseldorf, the Kunstverein München, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Roter Salon of the Volksbühne Berlin, the Archivio Conz, the Kasseler Kunstverein, the Fondation Beyeler and as part of Texte zur Kunst at Silent Green Berlin.


The event is part of the OFFEN FÜR KULTUR project at the Hansabibliothek and is free of charge.

The complete program of OFFEN FÜR KULTUR can be found here: www.offen-fuer-kultur.de.


OFFEN FÜR KULTUR is funded by the LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin.


(Picture: Olivia Seiling)