Seraphina Lenz: seeing through black

In 1926, Coco Chanel invented the Petite Robe Noire. *Vogue* predicted that the dress would become the uniform for all women of taste.

A hundred years later, Seraphina Lenz is using this anniversary as an opportunity to create a new installation at oqbo.

Three arrangements are set up in the space. Black dresses hang upside down from the ceiling by their hems. Due to gravity, they appear as independent forms—amorphous volumes that, from a distance, look like sharply defined silhouettes. Opposite them hangs a tableau featuring pages from a late 19th-century encyclopedia. All pages depicting a tool were removed and blacked out for this installation. By painting over them, the images are stripped of their contextual meaning and simultaneously framed; they appear like windows into another time—perhaps the future, perhaps the past, or perhaps an imaginary era.

Runtime: Sat, 24/10/2026 to Sat, 21/11/2026

Takes place here:

• oqbo