Caroline Achaintre | Inhabitants

Encounter is pleased to present Caroline Achaintre Inhabitants. Opening on the 24th November, this important exhibition marks the artist’s first solo presentation in Portugal and also with the gallery. The show brings together a significant collection of institutionally exhibited hand tufted textiles, ceramics and watercolours, created over the last five years. The artist’s contemporary constructions are imbued with a hybrid of references, from European carnivals to prehistoric cave paintings, German Expressionism to Science Fiction.

“I want my objects to have an immediate presence, and not to be the illustration of an idea or a reference. I am also very interested in anthropomorphism and the coexistence of several states in a single work of art, as a kind of multiplicity of personalities. Fluidity allows me to create this in-between, this state of tension!” (Caroline Achaintre)

Inhabitants interrogates Achaintre’s ongoing preoccupation with the concept of ‘animism.’ The artist is concerned with uncanny potential of an object to contain multiple identities simultaneously. As such, Achaintre’s enigmatic works slip and morph between animal and human, abstract and figurative, the disguised and the readable. At once a body, a mask, a watchful pair of eyes, the works conjure an atmosphere of uncertainty, triggering unconscious images carried within the viewer.

Achaintre’s innovative and experimental techniques in textile and ceramic subvert what have previously been perceived as ‘traditional’ craft mediums. The artist collapses hierarchies between painting and sculpture whilst complicating conventional ideas of labour and domesticity. Malleability and risk are fundamentally inherent to the Achaintre’s process. Each of her techniques employs a method of partially ‘blind’ making, guided by the material the artist’s psychic forms intuitively take shape.

In her textiles, such as ‘Igor’ and ‘Bia Ultra,’ Achaintre tufts multiple strands of wool, individually firing them through the back of the tapestry with a wool gun until the images takes form. The process of making the ceramics also echoes these instinctive slippages in the tapestries. The clay folds and impresses and as the ceramics are fired in the kiln, they take on a new previously unseen identity through the emergence of their colourful and layered glazes. Manipulating sheets of paper soaked and stained in ink and water, Achaintre again utilizes the permeability of the medium to draw out her distinct and uncanny visions.

Inhabitants runs until the 4th of February 2023.

Biography

Born in France in 1969, raised in Germany and based in England, Caroline Achaintre attended the Kunsthochschule in Halle, then the Chelsea College of Art and Design, and the Goldsmiths University of London. The artist is nourished by multiple and radically different cultural references that influence her approach. With her sculptures made of wool, ceramic and with her watercolours, the artist appropriates each space to install her hybrid creatures, transforming the exhibition space into a theater where a dialogue between different characters half-fantastic, half-ghostly can take place. Inspired at once by European carnivals, primitivism, German Expressionism and science fiction, Caroline Achaintre’s work on the one hand evokes the possible coexistence of several characters within a same being as well as the tensions generated by duality. No precise indication is given as to how to approach the work of Achaintre. We see in turn a mask, a garment, an animal… Her works have the particular feature of being difficult to define. At once abstract and figurative, they reveal anthropomorphic forms and indicate a particular interest for animism. The mutation of forms and the plurality of possible interpretations engage the mind and the whim of the viewer. This is the strength of Caroline Achaintre’s work: to question our own capacity to be in the world as individuals defined by complex and multiple identities.

Recent selected solo exhibitions include: 'Extrazimmer', La Verrière, Fondation Hermès, Bruxelles/BE (2026), 'PENSION ABC', Contemporary Fine Arts, Belétage, Berlin/DE (2026), Galerie von Bartha, Basel/CH (2025), 'SHAPESHIFTER', Künstlerhaus Marktoberdorf, Marktoberdorf/DE (2025),'Achaintre Après Achaintre', Secci Gallery, Milan/IT (2024), 'The Cast', Duo Show with Raphael Sbrzesny, Haus Coburg, Delmenhorst/DE (2024), ‘Her Hare’, Visual Carlow, Ireland, (2024), ‘The Seeker’, Art Concept, Paris (2024), ‘Caroline Achaintre - Roadrunner’, Nueus Museum, Nuremberg (2023), ‘Doppelganger’ Museum Lother Fischer, Neumarkt, (2023), ‘Inhabitants’, Encounter, Lisbon (2022-23), ‘Shiftings’ Kunstmuseum Ravensburg/Centre d’art Pasquart/CH (2021-2022), ‘Permanante’ CAPC, Bordeaux/FR (2020-21), ‘Vue Liquide’ Fondation Thalie, Brussels (2020), MO.CO., Montpellier/FR (2019); ‘Permanent Wave’ Belvedere, Vienna/AU (2019); ‘Phantomas’ De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-sea/UK (2018); FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims/FR (2017); ‘Caroline Achaintre’ BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead/UK (2016); ‘Caroline Achaintre’ Tate Britain, London/UK (2015); ‘Present/Future’ Castello di Rivoli, Turin/IT (2013).Recent selected group exhibitions include: ‘New Ideas for Other Times’, Von Bartha, Switzerland (2024), ‘Softpower’, Kunsthaus Potsdam (2024), ‘Threads’, Arnolfini, Bristol/UK – (2023), ‘L’Ile intérieure’, Villa Carmignac, Ile de Porquerolles/FR (2023), ‘Art Textile. Matérialité textile des années 1920 à aujourd’hui’, Kunsthalle Vogelmann/Musée municipaux d’Heilbronn/DE ; Kunsthalle Emden/DE (Upcoming), ‘Summer Exhibition 2022’, Royal Academy of arts, London/UK (2022), ‘Toucher terre, l’art céramique’, Fondation Villa Datris, L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue/FR (2022), Contre-nature : Contes et céramiques, MO.CO. PANACÉE, Montpellier/FR (2022), Mimicry—Empathy, Fraeme, La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille/FR (2022), ‘Influence, biennale du textile contemporain’, Oloron-Sainte-Marie/FR (2021), Sculpture en fête, Fondation Villa Datris, L’isle sur-la-Sorgue/FR (2021), ‘Rêve d’une fête’, Parcours Saint Germain ed.20, Paris/FR (2021), ‘60 years, Tate Britain’, London/UK (2021), ‘Les flammes. L’âge de la céramique’, MAM – Musée d’Art Moderne, ( Paris/FR (2021) ‘L’Âme primitive’, Musée Zadkine, Paris/FR (2021) ‘La couleur crue’, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes/FR (2021).

Her work is part of numerous public collections including: Centre Pompidou, Paris/France, CAPC, Bordeaux/FR; Tate Britain, London/UK; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Arts Council Collection, UK, Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; FRAC Aquitaine, Bordeaux, and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims.

Artist Page at Encounter

Caroline Achaintre

'Inhabitants'