Katharina Rähmi
Katharina Rähmi (born near Basel) is a Swiss contemporary artist known for her meditative, process-based work in painting, drawing, installation, and object art. She studied textile design and fine art at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel in the late 1970s and later worked for many years as a teacher at the Zurich School of Design.
Early travels to Asia deeply influenced her artistic direction and led to an engagement with Buddhist art and philosophy. Since 2019, she has continued her studies in Chinese painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.
Katharina Rähmi often develops her work in extended series, carefully exploring materials and themes through natural elements such as rice and plant seeds. A significant recent focus is «Rice»—large, ground-based installations composed of thousands of grains of rice, video installations, and oversized rice grains realized in ceramic using nanoscan technology. These works emphasize ritual, concentration, and the subtle relationship between material, space, and viewer. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland, lately also in China. In 2019, she held her first solo museum exhibition at the IWE Museum in Kunming. In 2020, “Aura of the Grains” was also presented in Chengdu.
That same year, she was awarded the ERNTE Art Prize at the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen for her work Rice_Circle_Moon. Further exhibition include «Elevated» at Lechbinska Gallery in Zurich in 2022. In 2024 she participated in the Second Dehong International Art Biennale, «The Symbol and Source of Life» in Dehong. In 2025, she was invited to contribute to the inaugural exhibition of the new Chinese Cultural Center in Bern, «Human and Nature in Harmony», marking a moment of cultural dialogue between Switzerland and China. That same year, at Merci Gallery in Hangzhou, she unveiled her new project, «Painted Seed Flowers» — delicate works on silk that unfold like meditations on growth, memory, and the quiet poetry of becoming.
Katharina Rähmi lives and works between Zurich and Hangzhou. Her art invites viewers to reflect on the intersection of nature, spirituality, and everyday life— through the lens of something as humble yet profound as a grain of rice or a plant seed.
Solo Exhibitions
| 2026 | Objects and Things, Art and Culture Center of Ancient Tao-Tea-Mah Shaxi Town, Jianchuan County, Dali Bai |
| 2025 | Mercy Gallery, Hangzhou, China |
| 2022 | Elevated, Lechbinska Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2020 | Aura of the Grains, Europe Culture Season, Fanmate Flying Creative Park, Chengdu, China |
| 2019 | Aura of Rice Grains, IWE Museum, Kunming, China |
| 2014 | Stripped of all Colors, Casa del Tè, Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland |
| 1994 | 36 Metallic Pictures CU 2 x 8 Sequences, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Hannover, Germany |
| 1992 | Katharina Rähmi, Gallery J.W. Jans, Hamburg, Germany |