‘To travel means more than continually moving; it implies self-motion and change. Travelling enables us to remove the dust from our senses, and to touch them deeply, to plunge into new conceptual worlds where our own horizons are constantly expanded; above all it means to be free – freedom to be, to be aware.’

About Karin Altmann

Karin Altmann is an Austrian artist and academic. She is a senior lecturer at the department of Textile Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research interests are the practical and theoretical exploration and development of the textile element as a specific mediality, with regard to its appearance and significance in art and culture. Consequently, theory and practice always relate to, extend and deepen each other. The last twelve years have been devoted to researching the connections between art and spirituality.

This line of research has been pursued in her diploma thesis, entitled Kyrgyz Felt Art in the Context of Nomadism and Shamanism, and in her doctoral thesis on Bhutan’s Textile Arts, for which she spent almost an entire year in Bhutan.

Her book Fabric of Life – Textile Arts in Bhutan was published in November 2015 with De Gruyter.