The Coexistence of the Destroyed and the Impeccable — Meike Legler in Conversation
Meike
Legler
Los Angeles → Alzenau, Germany · Former clothing factory studio · meikelegler.world
Fashion designer turned textile artist. She buries bed sheets in Los Angeles soil for eight months, bleaches fabric until it finds its own pattern, and builds collages from vintage military tents, latex, fur and velvet that ask everything about the soul inside a broken body.
A textile artist trained in fashion design, Meike Legler returned to her hometown in Germany after five years in Los Angeles — setting up her studio in a former clothing production factory and continuing to push fabric far beyond its limits.
Tell us about yourself and how you got into art.
"I am a trained fashion designer and always have been liking to sew — one day I decided to try making a 'painting' out of fabrics and it brought me a lot of joy and sparked my interest. It happened very randomly."
"We live in my hometown Alzenau that I left 19 years ago to live and experience the big wide world. My studio is in the next village, just a 10-minute bike ride away, in a former clothing production factory — which is quite funny as I used to work in fashion before I turned towards fine art."
Tell us about your creative process.
"Often I start with the title of the piece that comes to my mind by listening to the news, into myself, or to the people I am surrounded by. The title determines the shapes, colours, and the composition."
"I love using fabrics that have laid outdoors for a long time as the sun and the rain work into the fibres and give it a unique and weathered look."
A found bed sheet buried in the soil of a Los Angeles property for 8 months. Earth, moisture and microorganisms left almost out-of-space like patterns — now integrated into the work.
Bleach changes the colours of fabrics in ways that are not controllable — creating its own irreversible pattern. The medium makes the decision.
Sun and rain work into the fibres over time, giving fabric a unique and weathered look that no dye or paint can replicate.
Vintage military tents · latex · fake fur · vintage linen · drop cloth · velvet · upholstery · curtains · bed sheets · wool · acrylic paint · dirt · clay · crayon.
"The coexistence between the destroyed, dirty, rebellious fabrics and the impeccable, new and clean fabrics — an analogy to our human existence in a body coined by trauma, suffering and grief, and on the other side, our eternal, divine and pure souls."
- Being hurt and hurting
- Trauma
- Suffering
- Failure
- Grief
- Purity
- Lightness
- Reincarnation
- The universe
- Flow
"For me, wellbeing is a state of balance that includes feeling physically strong, good about the work I do, excited to produce new works and being a part of a community that shares my values and views on life and the world."
"It's a feeling of lightness, of things just clicking and being in a flow of creating, getting enough time to reflect and relax."
You will also love
From the Antakly Projects archiveArtist whose joyful, bold use of colour and texture in mixed media work resonates directly with Meike's material experimentation and philosophical depth.
Read on Antakly Projects ↗ Textile Art · FeministTextile artist putting rubber tubing and acrylic dowels through an ancestral loom, using weaving as feminist activism. A kindred spirit in unorthodox material practice.
Read on Antakly Projects ↗Antakly Projects — originally Ninu Nina — has been in conversation with artists, designers, photographers and creatives from around the world since 2003. Meike Legler's practice — cosmic, material, and quietly transformative — is exactly the kind of work this archive was built to hold.
Visit meikelegler.world → · Explore the archive →
And for the personal rants, opinions you didn't ask for, and the occasional existential spiral: follow me on Substack.
The coexistence of the destroyed and the impeccable. ✦
