Anna Kohlweis

 Houses, Us (Eastport Chapter)
interdisciplinary (drawing, writing, paper sculpture, book formats)
2022 - ongoing

In recent years, an interdisciplinary body of work has emerged in my practice, in which I use the image of a building to depict the depth of the human experience.
Architectural structures, bridging the realistic and surreal, find their way into my work in painting, poetry, music composition, and film, often combining all disciplines.

It all starts with an adaptable catalogue of questions:
If we were houses, what would we look like? How are we connected? What kind of landscape do we sit in? What does our outside say about our inside? Any hidden rooms? Locked doors? Secret tunnels? What do others get to see of ourselves? How open or shut are we? Where do we draw boundaries and what kind of imagery can we use to depict them?

The architectural structure holds the mysterious and unexplored, the bottomless voids, the crowded kitchens, the sun-filled corners, the shut-in chapters of the self. Crawlspaces filled with razorblades. Multi-level basements. How open or closed are we, how protected? How air conditioned? How much on fire? Is there a fence? How high?

Using a language of visual metaphors, we make it possible to talk about what might have previously seemed too direct or too heavy to discuss. The community describes itself to me, community members describe themselves to each other, and through conversation, sketching, and writing, a virtual city of the collective psyche is built. It is an invitation into a state of play.
As the host of the conversation, I translate the stories into a visual, multi dimensional map of the human experience.

This chapter found its starting point during a residency at Tides Institute and Museum in Eastport, Maine, and is an ongoing interdisciplinary project.

Material experimentation and final install of fictional town map based on community stories.