For the first time, the work of designer Christa de Carouge (1936 - 2018) is being presented in an all encompassing exhibition. The opportunity to show at the Kunsthaus Zug was not only a completely new type of exhibition for her, she also called it the highlight and culmination of her career. Shortly after the opening of the exhibition, de Carouge was unexpectedly diagnosed with an incurable cancer. She passed away on January 17, 2018.

On display at the retrospective are the many things the fashion and textile designer acquired during her fruitful career. It also opens the curtain on a new stage, a great experiment: She is playing the entire Kunsthaus and, through her fabrics, intervenes in the architecture of the institution.

‘Please touch’ is the motto when her cloth installations invite visitors not only to touch but to snuggle up and even put them on. “My clothes are not fashion”, stated Christa de Carouge – not fashion but living space for those who cloak themselves in it. A dwelling in which you can feel at home wherever you are. Between the dress and its wearer she saw a relationship, that defies trends and short product lifecycles. De Carouge’s artistic beginnings date back to the 1970s. With her designs she accompanied the debate over the image of women and helped shape that image. Her earliest works came from a sense of emergence and to this day have a lot to do with freedom. ‘La dame en noir’ has not only been dressing herself exclusively in black for about a quarter century: her characteristic, generously cut designs are also that shade. From de Carouge’s point of view, black – far from distracting – frees our perception for the structures and qualities of textiles.

One of her business ventures took her to the Genevan suburb of Carouge, where she ran her own studio from 1978 onward. The town would play such an important role for the designer, that she chose its name as her alias. She is one of the few women designers in Switzerland to have written fashion history beyond national borders, selling her work not only in Zurich but in many other European metropolises as well. De Carouge, whose real surname is Christa Furrer, ended her career in 2013.

In addition to installations, the show in Zug also features sketches and photos and offers accompanying events. Venturing anew into areas related to art, the Kunsthaus Zug collaborates with her as a representative of textile design to once again explore new paths.

Curated by Matthias Haldemann