^{Alexandra Kehayoglou}

Alexandra Kehayoglou (born in Buenos Aires, 1981) is a visual artist who works primarily with textile materials. She creates her pieces utilizing a wide array of technical skills with which she produces works combining textiles, sculpture and installation. She is primarily interested in production processes bringing together art and craft, and develops functional works as complete works of art, in which knowledge of the materials, the technique, and spectator are inseparably intertwined.


Kehayoglou’s repertoire includes memories of various native landscapes that the artist has visited and desires to preserve over time. Her Pastizales (grasslands), fields, and shelter tapestries are like sublime realities which the viewer can contemplate or utilize. Each one is unique, with a texture, weave and palette that will not be repeated. Each piece is created from an ancient family tradition that nonetheless gives new meaning to the craft of weaving by hand.


In 2014, Kehayoglou created a major collaboration with Belgian designer Dries Van Noten. She developed a carpet of fifty meters long inspired by John Everett Millais’ Ophelia. The textile installation was first used as a catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, and later as a place for the models to rest at the Spring Women’s Collection of Van Noten. This so-called ‘magic carpet’ was exhibited in 2015 in PMQ, Hong Kong, and in Berlin as part of the Berlin Gallery Weekend.


In 2016, Kehayoglou presented the installation No Longer Creek at Design Miami/Basel, decrying the decimation of the Raggio creek in Buenos Aires. The interactive large-scale work was developed in response to the fair’s focus on landscape featuring both conceptual and industrial innovation.


In October 2016, the work Repoussoir for a New Perspective was exhibited at the Onassis Foundation, New York, as part of the festival Antigone Now. This carpet treats the exploitation of geological phenomena on the island of Milos in the Cyclades, which through mining and industrial use, has witnessed the extinction of enriched minerals.


At the end of 2017, The Triennial of The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, included Kehayoglou’s work Santa Cruz River. The work is an interactive installation part of an extensive research project about the damming of the Santa Cruz River in Argentinian Patagonia. This project showcased her critical vision of a disappearing landscape, and premonition of a future ecocide in one the most significant glacial rivers in South America.


Alexandra Kehayoglou’s work has become renowned as an outcry against deforestation and devastation, and for its call for environmental awareness. It is also a warning against the extinction of the wilderness, as well as a strong voice for changing a complacent society which does not seem sufficiently worried about the drastic climate changes brought about by mankind’s intense presence on Earth.


In September 2018, Kehayoglou presented the work What if All is at the Chiostro del Bramante, Rome, in the context of the exhibition ‘Dream’, curated by Danilo Eccher. Her new large-format site specific tapestry explores the disappearing tribes of Patagonia, and their relationship with cave-like landscapes and 10.000 B.C. rock paintings.


In 2019, she was invited to the Hannah Ryggen Triennal, exhibiting her series of Prayer Rugs and a first study of the Lago Salitroso in Patagonia. In this Triennial, her work was exhibited together with Ryggen’s political tapestries and one of Alighiero e Boetti Mappas, dialoguing her contemporary textile pieces with historical political and landscape exploration


During 2021, she exhibited a new series of works, following up her on site investigation of the Parana wetlands from Buenos Aires. The larger piece from this series, the Paraná de las Palmas River tapestry ,was presented at the 'Schurend Paradijs' (The Abrasive Paradise) - exhibition at the Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, The Netherlands.  The work Paraná de las Palmas River was also exhibited at  the Kennedy Center in March 2023, as part of the RiverRun festival


In 2023 Alexandra had a major solo exhibition at the Denver Botanical Garden, reuniting most of her textile works from the Paraná de las Palmas River project. In 2024, her large iconic Pastizal commissioned piece for Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, was exhibited at the Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen, Belgium, at the  'Eternal Spring. Gardens and Tapestries in the Renaissance' exhibition, curated by Carlotta Striolo, where Alexandra´s work dialogue with sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries.


During 2025, her  Paraná de las Palmas River tapestry was exhibited in several Museums in Europe, at the moment being exhibited at the exhibition 'Wool, Silk, Resistance' at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, where it will be on display till July 2026. Her work Meadow, inspired by the spring flowers of the island of Milos in Greece, was exhibited as part of the touring exhibition  'Garden Futures' by VITRA at the Victoria & Albert V&A. Dundee in Scotland, and at the Nieuwe Instituut Museum for architecture, design and digital culture, in Rotterdam.


Kehayoglou’s first monographic publication featuring an overview of her projects was published in 2024 by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Koenig and edited by Rome based renowned art historian Cornelia Lauf. At present, Alexandra is working between Athens and Buenos Aires.


Selected exhibitions include: Wool, Silk, Resistance' - Museum Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Art) Frankfurt, Germany (2026) 'Il Campo Espanso, arte e agricoltura in Italia dagli anni sessanta ad oggi', in Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, Italy - 'Garden Futures' -V&A Dundee, Scotland  -'Eternal Spring. Gardens and Tapestries in the Renaissance',  in Museum Hof van Busleyden, Mechelen, Belgium - 'Religion and Science' in Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, The Netherlands  (2025) -'Garden Futures' - Nieuwe Instituut Museum for architecture, design and digital culture, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands - 'Rivers voice: Textiles by Alexandra Kehayoglou' in Denver Botanical Gardens, Denver,USA - 'Biophilia: Nature Reimagined' - The Denver Art Museum, Denver, USA -'Il Campo Espanso, arte e agricoltura in Italia dagli anni sessanta ad oggi', in Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, Italy - Garden Futures (2024) Design Museum Helsinki and Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, Finland  - ”Riverrun Festival  - Kennedy Center, Washington DC, U.S - Garden Futures - VITRA Museum in Weil,  Rhein, Germany  - A soft place to land - MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland OHIO, USA (2023) Pricing Eccentric Talents II, P.E.T Projects, Athens, Greece -  ‘Flora/Fauna/Fibe,’ Textiles in Contemporary Art, Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center, Newport, Virginia, U.S. - Schurend Paradijs [The Abrasive  Paradise], Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, The Netherlands  - 'Tenminste Houdbaar Tot,’ [Consume by], Museum Arnhem, The Netherlands  - It's Our F***ing Backyard, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2022) Nature, Copper Hewitt Design Triennial with Cube Design Museum, New York / Amsterdam, USA/ The Netherlands - Hannah Ryggen’s Triennial, Trondheim, Norway (2019) ; Dream, Chiostro del Bramante, Rome (2018) ; Borderline - Miniartextil, Textile Museum, Varese, Italy (2017); Tissage/ Tressage...quand la sculpture défile, Villa Datris, L’Isle sur la Sorgue, France (2017); Borderline - Miniartextil, Le Château du Val Fleury, Gif sur Yvette, France (2017); The Sunshine Eaters, Ontario College of Art & Design University, Toronto, Canada (2017); NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2017); 27th International Exhibition of Contemporary Textile Art, Arte&Arte Associazione Culturale, Como, Italy (2016); Art in Art, Museum of Contemporary Art MOCAK, Krakow, Poland (2016); The Veterans, Dio Horia - Contemporary Art Platform, Mýkonos, Greece (2016); Wall to Wall: Carpets by Artists, MOCA Cleveland, USA (2016); No Longer Creek,, Design Miami/ Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2016); Glacier, Human Nature, Chamber NY, New York, USA (2016); Pastizal, PMQ - The Qube, Hong Kong (2015); Pastizal, Berlin Gallery Weekend, Berlin, Germany (2016); Senderos, Journeys of the South, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2016);  ; About Change, World Bank, Washington, USA (2011);).


Alexandra’s work is created from an ancient family tradition that gives new meaning to the craft of weaving by hand..