ANJA WERNER
- AH Magazine
- 5 days ago
- 9 min read
Craft as a foundation, sculpture as narrative, hope as a guiding principle
Anja Werner builds her work on workshop knowledge, a long and intimate relationship with wood, and a finely tuned sense of construction and precision. Her artistic practice grew from her training as a carpenter and cabinetmaker and her studies in wood design. From there, she opened her work toward sculpture as a space for storytelling. A decisive turning point came during her stay in Mtwara, Tanzania, where she learned carving from Makonde sculptors and encountered art as an everyday language shaped by symbols, rhythm, and community.
In this conversation, she speaks about splitting wood as the first step toward form, about patina and traces as layers of history, about color, drawing, and collage as elements equal to sculpture, and about the role of teaching in the way she thinks and works. The conversation offers a close view of how she develops stories, starting from material and lived experience.
Your path began with training as a carpenter and cabinetmaker and led through studies in wood design to an independent artistic practice with your own workshop. What did craftsmanship give you as a foundation, and when did you feel that you were no longer simply building objects but developing your own artistic language?
Training as a carpenter and cabinetmaker forms my foundation. Today, I see it as a gradual approach to wood, almost like getting to know someone step by step. Before that, I gained my first experiences with the artist Johannes Feige in my neighboring town of Glauchau, where I learned traditional chip carving. During my carpentry training, my close, constructive engagement with the material deepened. I learned to work with machines, discovered the distinct qualities of different types of wood, and became familiar with many methods of processing.
I am especially fascinated by wood joints. They remain visible and honest, and for me, they feel functional and ornamental at the same time. This openness, the decision to show what carries the structure, moves me deeply. I also experience wood as patient and, at the same time, resistant. I had to learn to follow the material rather than impose an idea on it.
During my studies in wood design, I met Professor Hans Brockhage, who recognized early on that I cared less about designing chairs or exhibition systems than about telling stories through wood. He introduced me to artistic positions such as Louise Nevelson, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, as well as to the poetic figures of the Erzgebirge woodcarver Karl Müller from Seiffen. Above all, he gave me the space to develop my own themes. A formative step came through his support for my wish to travel to Tanzania and learn carving from the Makonde.
There, I experienced wood sculpture as a natural union of craft and artistic expression. That time shaped my understanding of sculpture in a lasting way. Looking back, both carpentry and wood sculpture form a solid base for my work. The range of perspectives I gained through design, craft, and sculpture allowed me to develop my artistic practice. In the years that followed, my hands gradually found what my eyes and inner vision had anticipated for a long time.
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In 1991, you spent four months in Mtwara, Tanzania, learning wood carving with Makonde sculptors. What did this time shift within you in a lasting way, and how do you still sense today that this experience shaped your view of form, rhythm, and symbol?
Those four months in Mtwara, Tanzania, changed my relationship with art and my view of material.
The people, encounters, scents, sounds, vegetation, red earth, and warmth opened a new sense of what art can be.
The simple living conditions made it even clearer how far art can reach beyond what feels familiar. I felt the narrative force of everyday life, and I felt it again in the fantastical figures carved in black wood. Form followed material and story. The Makonde made the world of dreams tangible through symbols. The rhythms of life appeared across artistic expression, in music, dance, and sculpture, and in the design of everyday objects. Everything carried a direct joy in being alive.
Only with distance and reflection did I realize that this way of storytelling did more than impress me. I try to preserve it within my own artistic world and practice. I discovered art outside galleries and museums that touched me deeply because it felt close and accessible. Its strength lived in the simplicity of storytelling, in its directness, and in its poetic form. I learned from the freedom with which this art moves between the real and the surreal, gives space to the material, and follows its own course.
The Makonde showed me how rich expression can become when there is little. From that attitude, I developed a deep regard for the small, in art and in life.
In your split wood series, much begins with splitting, following natural cracks and structures already present in the wood. How do you negotiate in practice with the material’s stubbornness, where do you yield, where do you stay firm, and how do you recognize the moment when the figure has truly been found?
For me, the work stays a negotiation from start to finish. Sometimes I feel the form settle into the right place, and other times I sense that I need to begin again. A constant dialogue unfolds, a careful balance between material, intuition, and experience. The magic lives in that process, and I prefer to leave part of it untouched.
Your works feel as though they come from everyday life, neighborhood, and city, and at the same time from dream spaces, so that the real and the fantastical touch each other naturally. What sets a story in motion for you, a specific moment from life, a sentence you overhear, or an inner image that appears during the work?
A bit of everything. Sometimes a single word I pick up in passing feels enough, and entire chains of meaning begin to form. I see images, connect worlds, turn thoughts upside down on purpose, and playfully test new connections, often with a wink or a humorous association. At times, an encounter, an attitude, or a gesture triggers a sequence of forms and figures before my inner eye. I expand them and lead them into the surreal. This works best for me when I hike alone.
I also want to hold on to moments. I enjoy small observations, take pleasure in grotesque scenes and coincidences, and share them. My way of working links closely to collecting. Words, quotes, found images, discoveries about flora and fauna, and sketches in my notebooks gather over time and form a reservoir I draw from later. I notice connections, recognize patterns, and carry them into new contexts. For me, the real and the surreal merge inseparably. From this ongoing practice, forms and stories emerge that I return to again and again because they match my artistic language and help me understand, interpret, and endure the world.
In your work, sculpture and image often meet directly. Color, drawing, print, collage, and relief do not function as decoration but as equal voices. Many works also grow on found wood surfaces that already carry a lived patina. What fascinates you about this memory within the material, and how do you decide when a work remains a pure figure and when it calls for layers of image, graphic work, and collage?
I love the freedom to bring painting and graphic elements onto a sculpture without forcing them into a fixed category. That freedom comes from my search for expression in a world that continues to fascinate me. I carry an abundance of thoughts and ideas, and I sometimes struggle to bring a story to its point. When I layer chalk, ink, and colored pencils on wood, transitions appear that feel full of accidental poetry. An openness emerges that delights me each time.
What fascinates me most is the memory within the material, the traces, the patina, the stories it already holds.
When I work with these existing histories, unexpected discoveries appear. So much already lives there. I rediscover and reconnect, even when people centuries before me made similar gestures. This sense of belonging to a long continuity, of repetition, and of something larger gives me stability and connection.
This freedom also carries joy. I reshape again and again. Sculpture, painting, graphic work, collage, and relief meet on equal terms, and each voice adds to the narrative. This language feels rich, diverse, and open-ended. For me, the most beautiful part lies in staying inside that diversity and letting the dialogue between material, form, and color keep moving.
You have worked as a teacher for many years, and since 2012, you have founded and led the art group Art Collectiv in Plauen. What does working with students and young artists give back to you, and does this dialogue sometimes change your own perspective, your routines, or even decisions in the studio?
Teaching and my own artistic work let me stand firmly on two feet, within the artistic context and in life with art. In teaching, I value exchange, communication, and the breadth of perspectives and interpretations of our world. It gives me a chance to sharpen my approaches and methods, to pass them on, and to keep questioning and reordering them.
I remain amazed by the creative power that can unfold when I guide an active teaching process. The joy that comes from it, and the searching energy, return to me as well. The exchange runs both ways. I take real pleasure in contrasting positions, in nuanced perception, and in shared understanding, as well as in strengthening structures together. I have always felt drawn to the ways children and young people see and work, and also to the ways people create without formal artistic training. In workshops and art circles, I experience an intense search for language and expression, carried by an openness and joy that crosses assumed boundaries and sets common rules aside. This direct, approachable way of making touches me again and again, and it feeds into my own work.
You like the idea that art is the highest form of hope. In 2025, you showed works under the title Zugabe Zwitschern in Chemnitz, and at Huntenkunst 2025 in Ulft, you received an honorable mention from Latvian artists who selected three positions that moved them most. Where does hope become tangible for you in art, in story, humor, color, material, or in the encounter with the audience? And what would you like to open up thematically or formally in 2026?
In a time when verbal communication often feels fragile, and physical presence slips further into the digital, I respond through sculpture, painting, and collage that people can experience with their bodies. This analogue, sensuous encounter creates closeness and touches emotion directly. For me, art holds a special power here. It speaks beyond words, in the language of feeling. I touch something in viewers, directly or indirectly, through storytelling, through the imperfect texture of reality, through the lively agency of my material, and through openness in interpretation.
Hope becomes tangible here, in shared understanding, in crossing boundaries, and in the possibility of peaceful communication without words.
Photo: Vanessa Kessel Chattering, 2023, Anja Werner | Dove Whisperer, 2025, Anja Werner | Paloma, My Little Dove, 2025, Anja Werner
Freedom matters to me, especially the freedom to search for my own themes. This searching, paired with the hope of finding, already feels like lived hope. I also value the gift of accidental discovery, the moment no plan can produce, yet it carries the work forward. Humor, and a certain fool’s freedom, accompany that process. Awkward and quirky ideas open other levels, keep outcomes open, and give me joy and contentment.
Right now, I work on the theme Equinox Thoughts on Day and Night. It considers the simultaneous presence of opposing forces and the delicate balance that forms between them: birth and death, day and night, peace and war, light and dark, above and below. Within this balance, I sense an idea of peace and, with it, hope. I try to stay steady, find a counterweight, and remain part of an ongoing movement: folding, repetition, return. A feeling of being held, and of belonging in every position and on every level, becomes tangible in art. For me, it offers another comforting form of hope.
The conversation with Anja Werner offers a close view of a practice that begins in the discipline of craft and keeps unfolding through artistic freedom. Wood remains an active partner in her work. Cracks, structures, patina, and resistance lead to form, and form leads to narrative. Within this process, she brings sculpture into direct conversation with drawing, color, graphic work, and collage. The works carry traces of time, humor, personal experience, and a desire for immediate, sensuous encounter. Her current theme, Equinox Thoughts on Day and Night, gathers her interest in balance and tension and reflects her belief in quiet, direct communication through form and material.
Anja Werner - Holzgestalten
