Sabine Steinmair, whose work encompasses numerous forms of traditional handwork drawn from the “everyday”, transforms these techniques through recombination, thereby erasing boundaries between art and non-art practices. Paintings, clothing and drawings, each divergent, are all integrated into her work through meticulously detailed execution. Steinmair alters the contextual relationship of production and the “finished product” by giving each equal value.

In refute of consumer culture, Steinmair often produces her own art materials, giving each piece a holistic character of the handmade. Highly influenced by her upbringing in the isolated Trentino-Alto Adige – formerly the Austrian Sudtirol and now an autonomous region of northern Italy – Steinmair’s personal visual language is derived from the area’s Alpine craft culture, particularly artisanal forms of sewing and decorative embroidery.

Born in Meran, Italy in 1977, Steinmair graduated from the Sorbonne, Paris, with a degree in Comparative Literature & Linguistics (2003), and from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in painting (2004).