about

In my own words: 

I’m Anne Kathrin Achenbach, a German American artist and social practitioner working at the intersection of language, art and community building.

Migration and the effects of displacement and how people communicate across geographic, cultural and social borders are at the heart of my explorations.

My main interests are the variations and nuances of how people encode, decode and interact with their world and how memories, emotions and stories are shared with others. I work predominantly through textiles as a universal language that we all share. 

In my role as a social practitioner I create tools and facilitate interactions and experiences that challenge assumptions and help create conditions conducive to alter people’s frames of references in culturally and socially diverse communities. 

In 2018, I co-founded  WEAVE Community Inc., a 501(c)(3) based in Ithaca, NY. WEAVE Community creates tools, programs and strategies to connect people and counteract polarization and division. One of its current projects is The Soil Factory “…a vibrant community space where art, science and sustainability come together to create new collaborations, new experiences and new ideas.“

I offer a regular communal practice of creative mending in diverse and intergenerational settings weaving together people and stories while giving a tangible experience of care: for the textiles we live in and the people in our world(s) and our planet.

In my own artistic practice I translate experiences and memories into textile works and writings/drawings. I explore traditional and innovative methods of interacting with everyday materials. I mostly work with textiles, thread, paper and ink.