Elisabeth Gschiel borrowed a sewing machine and began stiching together plastic packaging materials, wherever glue failed. This was the first step in testing the creative potential of this tool. Doing the opposite of what the machine was intended to do—sewing textiles—the artist tried to use the sewing machine as a kind of “drafting pencil” on diverse materials such as plastic, paper, leather, etc.
The artist and architect shows the objects, installations, and drawings she has created in recent years in a lecture, in which she discusses her work with the drawing instrument called a “sewing machine.”

Elisabeth Gschiel, born in 1975 in Hartberg, Austria, and now lives and works in Graz. In her art Gschiel researches themes that shift from architecture and landscape to art and culture. The spectrum ranges from painting, photography, design objects, and sewn installations to architecture. The artist’s materials are plastic, paper, and leather; sewing and textile accessories such as straight pins, zippers, and hooks; or old portrait photographs found at flea markets, which she sews over.

Educated at the Ortweinschule in Graz, department of graphic design. Studied architecture at the Technische Universität in Graz. Residencies of several months in Zurich in 2005, Zagreb in 2007, and Hamburg in 2014. Recipient of a grant from the state of Steiermark for a residency in Guimaraes, Portugal, in 2013.
Member of the artists’ collective Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz.