Stefanie Knobel's solo exhibition On Surfaces and Structures is the result of her long-term exploration of cotton and her specific examination of the Volkarthaus. The building was constructed in 1904/05 by the Winterthur architects Jung & Bridler as the headquarters of the ‘Handelshaus Gebrüder Volkart’ with a neo-Gothic exterior and Art Nouveau elements in the English style inside. Founded in 1851 in Winterthur and Bombay (now Mumbai) by the brothers Salomon and Johann Georg Volkart, the company was active in the global transit trade in colonial goods and soon became a leader in the worldwide cotton trade, exporting raw cotton from the Indian subcontinent, among other things. In her artistic work, predominantly in the medium of performance, Stefanie Knobel searches for forms for multi-layered facts, thoughts and emotions that cannot be easily conveyed as images and movement: The violent history of the cultivation and trade of the natural fibre, but also the biographies of the people who came into contact with cotton, such as the textile workers in India and Switzerland, and the feelings associated with it for the artist. On Surfaces and Structures, 23.3 - 24.5.2025, Coalmine - Raum für Fotografie in Winterthur was curated by Annette Amberg. The exhibition included four works: The spatial intervention Untitled, the performance video seeping in, the performance The House, and the publication A Cotton Conversation (with Samrat Banerjee).

In the performance video seeping in, the movements of the textile workers merge with the entanglements of art financing and a reflection on the White Cube as an exhibition space that is only supposedly neutral. The spatial, site-specific intervention Untitled covered the walls of the White Cube with khadi cotton fabric from Islampur, Murshidabad, India. The performance The House was shown on May 24, 2025 in the otherwise inaccessible atrium of the Volkart House.

Additionally, on April 24, 2025 there was a discussion and presentation of jointly selected archive material from the trading company Gebrüder Volkart between the artist, the historian Prof. Dr Harald Fischer Tiné, the curator Annette Amberg and the artist Samrat Banerjee. With responses by Rohit Jain and Vera Ryser.