AURA Texte No. 01 • September 2025 • Artist Focus: Caroline Achaintre courtesy of DigitalAura.Com

 

Film still digital artwork by Sarnia

AURA Texte
No. 01 • • Artist Focus: Caroline Achaintre
“I like the work to have a presence — to be slightly unsettling, to resist becoming purely decorative.” — Caroline Achaintre

Masks, Textures, and Thresholds

Caroline Achaintre’s work is where tapestry becomes theatre. Using hand‑tufted wool, ceramic, and watercolour, she constructs pieces that hover between costume, wall hanging, and living entity. Her forms are playful yet unnerving — channeling the language of primitivism, carnival, and Expressionism while refusing to settle as either painting or sculpture.

The sheer physicality of the works is striking: they droop, curl, and spill into space, implicating the viewer in their gravity. Achaintre’s wool “faces” are both masks and creatures, their twisted mouths frozen mid‑howl. This duality — between joy and menace, object and character — is what makes them so arresting in the home or gallery space. To live with one is to live with a chorus of material voices.

Artist Links

Bibliography & Further Reading

  1. Whitechapel Gallery. Caroline Achaintre: Fantômas. Exhibition Catalogue, 2015.
  2. Rian, Jeff. “Material Masquerade: On Caroline Achaintre’s Tufted Works.” Artforum, April 2020.
  3. Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Ways of Curating. Faber & Faber, 2015.

For full catalogue raisonné and sales inquiries, contact Arcade, London.

© 2025 AURA Texte. All rights reserved. This article is part of the ongoing Artist Focus series.

Press

Press Release

For Immediate Release
Artist Sarnia de la Maré unveils a feminist triptych-in-progress: self-portraiture, satire, and the fragile stage of modern womanhood

Sarnia de la Maré FRSA has released City Chicks, the third work in her ongoing selfie-art series, joining The Bridesmaid and Tribal Grandmother to form what is emerging as a powerful triptych-in-progress. This body of work places the artist herself at the centre of a conversation about women, performance, and fractured identity in the digital age.

  • The Bridesmaid (2025) uses Victorian layering techniques and double exposure to create a ghostly, painterly portrait. The work highlights historical erasures of women’s agency while reasserting presence through layered time.

  • Tribal Grandmother (2025) — in both monochrome and a blue-wash colour version — invokes the matriarchal figure as symbol of wisdom, strength, and continuity. The piece speaks to generational memory and the silencing of elder voices in contemporary culture.

  • City Chicks (2025) moves into satirical territory. Here, three golden, mirrored figures tread on fragile eggshells while oversized chicks look on. Bleeding toes expose the cost of “walking on eggshells” for public image, while the absurd chick imagery critiques the infantilisation of women and the absurdity of performance.

Together, these three works form the opening act of a broader project that reclaims the selfie as intellectual and artistic rebellion. The repetition of the artist’s own body—mirrored, fractured, reimagined—collapses the divide between artist, subject, and critic, making the work both personal and universal.

The triptych establishes the tone for the larger series-in-progress: an evolving dialogue between history, myth, and satire, with women’s visibility and vulnerability at its core. Collectors now have the opportunity to acquire these works at their inception, as the series expands into a fuller exploration of identity, endurance, and feminist commentary.

City Chicks is now available exclusively through de la Maré’s Saatchi Art store.

About the Artist

Sarnia de la Maré FRSA (also known as iServalan) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and writer whose work spans visual art, music, and experimental cinema. Her practice often integrates feminist critique, neurodiverse awareness, and environmental commentary.

Press Contact

Visit My Saatchi Gallery

For interviews, images, or further information, please contact:
sarniadelamare@gmail.com