Cooper Hewitt says...
Bernice Christophe-Hafel was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, until her family moved to Germany in 1969. She studied art and textile design at the Folkwang School in Essen while training as an art therapist at the Akthof art school in Munich. She began her career in the early 2000’s as a freelance textile designer and painter, splitting her time between Italy, Germany, and Vancouver. In her designs Christophe-Hafel incorporates concepts from her therapeutic investigations of the psyche, good and evil, light and shadow. Since 2009 she has been working on more figurative motifs; including dolls, masks, and representations from fairytales. The seemingly playful expression of these figures, on the one hand humorous, allows Christophe-Hafel to approach taboo subjects such as violence, sadism, and abuse. Her primary concern is to achieve expressions of human emotions and interactions on a deep level. Today Christophe-Hafel works primarily with collage, a medium which provides a synthesis of textile design and painting.
