Monika Auch

is a visual artist with a background in medicine.
For Auch, the worlds of art and medicine are inextricably bound together with both professions requiring the same core skills: a knack of understanding humans and their environment, scientific curiosity and haptic senses.

She studied textiles at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (1996-2000) and with Bauhaus weaver descendant Margot Rolf (1). “Weaving has an intellectual and a manual side. I experiment with materials and innovative technology on a computerized loom. My hands are the intelligent connection between machine, material knowledge and imagination.”  Her fascination and expertise lie in handweaving on a digitalized loom, although she has worked on industrial Dornier looms at the Textile Museum Tilburg: ‘Weaving by hand gives me freedom to experiment with exceptional, smart materials and sculptural forms.’ 

Auch teaches workshops and masters classes in bespoke programs, i.e. how to realize ideas through material, composition and form.  >>outreach program 

 As editor and writer she concentrates on technical and material aspects of making through interviews with artists, designers and experts in art-history. >>see articles section . Her practice-based research focusses on the "intelligence of the hand" .

1 In 1923 the Dessau Bauhaus closed it’s doors under threat of the Nazi fascist movement. Bauhaus weavers emigrated to the USA and The Netherlands. Kitty van der Mijl Dekker taught weaving at the Amsterdam ‘Instituut van Kunst Nijverheid Onderwijs’, which later became the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Honoring this legacy, Weeflab wants to profile and develop weaving. photo: Ray Edgar