Annika Thiems responds to Méret Oppenheim's surrealist legacy at Bartha_contemporary

Bartha_contemporary presents the first solo exhibition by Annika Thiems (b. 1991), entitled On wings (or almost), on view from March 5 to April 5 2026. Conceived in response to Méret Oppenheim’s print series Parapapillonneries (1976), the exhibition unfolds as an inquiry into absurdity, surrealism, and psychoanalytic thought. The new sculptures gesture toward the repressed: futile attempts at containment and order, like an insect evading the pin. Working across textile sculpture and installation, Thiems creates soft structures that hover between utility and excess, tenderness and restraint; objects that appear to have devised their own coping mechanisms. The works feel simultaneously over-prepared and yielding, suspended between protection and exposure. Drawing on her background in psychology, Thiems employs free association and a surrealist