Art Meets Community Engagement

Liz Kueneke's unique project, The Urban Fabric, transcends traditional art by engaging locals in public spaces. Each stitch transforms neighborhoods into collaborative art pieces, encouraging meaningful dialogues about urban life. This innovative approach invites community members to reflect on their environment through creative expression, redefining the art experience.

1. Your artistic practice involves using embroidery to explore urban spaces and personal experiences. How do you think the tactile nature of embroidery enhances the mapping and representation of urban environments compared to other forms of art?

The tactile nature of embroidery influences this project in several ways. First, I choose second-hand bedsheets to embroider the map onto. This is because they have a history, and also because everyone can relate to this kind of cloth. It is intimate, soft to the touch, and recognizable, and so although people may not know me and may feel apprehensive, they already can feel somewhat at home with my materials. As for the embroidery itself, I think that the action brings many people back to early memories of learning stitching as a child. And for those who view embroidery as quite foreign, there is also a slowness to the action which benefits the project...it means that people stick around longer around the table and share more ideas. If they were simply using stickers or pins to mark places, they would be done too quickly...and they also would not have nearly the same amount of fun...even if it might be a challenging kind of fun.

2. You learned stitching from your grandmother, and now your work involves public embroidery circles. How has this personal history with embroidery influenced your approach to community engagement and artistic practice?

I believe that we cannot be passionate about an art project if it does not touch us to the core. I have worked on this project now for 16 years, and I never would have had the stamina to do this without these beautiful memories of my grandmother, and my feeling of retaining a connection to her...of a sort of legacy. I have also found that embroidery just happens to be a very useful tool for my artistic goals, because I feel that all people actually have a connection with textiles, and so as people approach the embroidery table, they automatically have something in common with the other people there.

3. “The Urban Fabric” has been featured in various international cities. How do the cultural and social contexts of different cities shape the way participants engage with and interpret your mapping projects?

One of the biggest ways in which the cultural and social contexts of different cities affects this project is each society's approach to needlework. In several of the countries, there is a taboo amongst many of the men against it, and so in those places I need to encourage the men more. In other countries, however, such as Morocco and India, I found that men are often in textile-related professions, and so they were very willing participants.

4. Your work has been featured in various academic papers and art books. How do you see the relationship between academic discourse and artistic practice, and how has this interplay influenced your projects?

I believe it is important that each profession does not live in a bubble. If each person only relates to their own discipline, then there will be no cross-pollination nor any ideas that are meaningful to our evolving world. I think that the academic world is a good place for ideas to mix...as students are living together and researching their fields, they can influence each other. In my case, I never studied architecture or urban planning myself, but I have collaborated with many architects (they also love maps as I do!), and I feel very honored that my participatory methodologies made their way into several of their thesis papers.

5. Looking ahead to your upcoming projects in Hamburg, Rotenburg, and Guadalajara, what new themes or ideas are you excited to explore, and how do you anticipate these cities will contribute to the evolution of “The Urban Fabric”?

With each new place comes a new step in the evolution of the project and this keeps it fresh. One new aspect of the project is that I am involving local textile traditions. For example, this year I was in Sefrou in Morocco and to mark their answers in the map, participants used locally made "lakaad" buttons, which are made by hand with thread. When I go to Guadalajara, my collaborator and I will be using locally woven "rebozos" which have an incredible significance in the history and culture. In the case of the small town of Rotenburg in Germany, I am integrating the Urban Fabric project with other branches of my art, and focusing on the river, which I will not only embroider, but I will also physically immerse myself into in a performance art piece. I will float down the river with the map, thus literally impregnating the map with the essense of the place. In Hamburg I will be working in a much more intimate environment...embroidering the buildings and surroundings of an artistic co-op, and so much more architecturally and three-dimensionally focused than my usual two-dimensional street plans.

6. Get inspired!

INSTAGRAM: @liz.kueneke
WEBSITE: lizkueneke.com