“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
- Whitechapel Gallery. Caroline Achaintre: Fantômas. Exhibition Catalogue, 2015.
- Rian, Jeff. “Material Masquerade: On Caroline Achaintre’s Tufted Works.” Artforum, April 2020.
- Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Ways of Curating. Faber & Faber, 2015.
For full catalogue raisonné and sales inquiries, contact Arcade, London.
