Artist, lives and works in Brussels.

Céline Vahsen is interested in the socio-cultural dimension of textiles, in their emotions – movements and feelings. In most societies, textile knowledge has been communicated, transmitted and preserved through non-verbal language. This heritage evolved and has been enriched by exchanges via historical trade routes, passed on intergenerationally by women, using their hand as a tool – becoming embodied knowledge. Her work encompasses various references and traditions from geographically dispersed, hybrid cultures, as well as customs from different periods throughout the history of weaving.

A woven fabric is thus never empty, it contains history, memory and a narrative.

The starting point for her work is the cultural legacy of the textile medium. With a contemporary approach, she explores techniques anchored in ancestral textile-making. She develops color compositions of and patterns from traditional production methods, which transports the textile-heritage into the realm of contemporary art.

The threads themselves are approached intuitively, morphing and manifesting themselves into unpredictable rhythms in the structure. Empirical experimentation brings them together in a personal modus operandi, hijacking traditional results while paying tribute to them – amalgams of cultural references.

Without crossing threads, fabric would not exist. Weavings are fundamental structures themselves, incorporating the notion of linear progressivity. They are created in constant movement, a stacking of gestures, by the causal unfolding of the fabric. The act of weaving occurs over long stretches of time, and per deconstruction of each step in the process – selecting the yarns, producing the dyes with natural materials, and weaving with traditional, artisan techniques and instruments, which counts as a seizing reminder of the notion of time.

Her work is a visual phenomenon, it is the appearance of a delicate plastic balance that evokes in the viewer a relationship that is first and foremost of aesthetic nature. This centrifugal presence, with no center point nor a singular direction, can capture the gaze, and hypnotizes through a symbiotic fusion of texture, tone and light. These compositions and colors offer themselves to be seen and felt with a certain immediacy and great simplicity. Simultaneously, the multidimensionality of the works graps one. Naturally colored threads pile up vertically, the colors radiate, unfold themselves in the disposition and throughout the surface effects of the canvas weave itself - plain binding, the simplest and primordial way of crossing threads. The interwoven colors instead of a superimposed picture, the conception of this foundation – the base cloth, is the essence of her practice. The configuration of tape fabrics – visual time fragments, which are mounted on frames and composed to accomplish a visual image. Tangible images, presented frontally, to make it possible to view the colors in vibration, becoming painting-like objects.

The artist has a strongly material-based practice, sharing agency with the materials she uses over their final destination. Processing them manually, informs the coming-into-being of them – both in outlook, as well as in duration. By using natural materials such as silk, wool, linen and untreated copper threads, showing their ability for transformation, the works reflect on temporality. They are all left to mingle, and subsequently interact with natural phenomena, visualizing natural cycles.

Another aspect of her research is the digital era we live in, ushered in by the industrial age, with engineering inventions which permanently changed society. The artist doesn’t decide on the final motif in advance, she allows for randomness to contribute in the emergence of rhythms to appear, challenging her fascination with the tension at play between chance and order. This methodology unearths the mathematical systems of looms, which are at the origin of society’s technical progress, partially engendered by the beginning of the industrial revolution and leading us to the modern-computers of today. Square images, reminiscent of displays or screens, remind us of the beginnings of the computerized world. The formats of her works reference the digital world we live in, capturing the Zeitgeist. For the viewer who has no historical knowledge about textiles, their impact, the technical progress and the profound influences on today‘s society throughout this medium remains invisible.

Bio

After studying visual arts at ESA St-Luc Brussels, HGK Lucerne, and HAW Hamburg, Céline Vahsen obtained her Master’s degree in the textile department of ENSAV La Cambre in 2013, Brussels, Belgium. Currently she teaches at KASK & Conservatorium – School of Arts in Ghent.

Among others, she has been artist in residency at Wiels – Contemporary Art Centre, Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain, iMAL – Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology, Fondation CAB in Brussels and at the Frans Masereel Centrum, in Kasterlee, Belgium. She participated at the Académie des Savoir-Faire, Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Paris, France.

Her work has been shown at IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art, Eupen, Belgium, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, New York Textile Month, New York, United States, Ccinq, Brussels, Barbé Gallery, Ghent, etc. 

Currently on view: The Waves at Ccinq, Rue de Ligne 2, Brussels, Belgium, group exhibition.

Upcoming

Solo show ყველაფერი – Beyond Hues, opening on the 18th of May 2024 at EA Shared Space, Ingorkva Str. 10/2, Tbilisi, Georgia. The exhibition is running till June 20.

Limburg Biënnale 2024, group exhibition, from June 29th till August 25th in Maastricht and Venray, The Netherlands.

Solo show, opening in November 2024 at Saarländische Galerie, Charlottenstraße 3, Berlin, Germany.

European Prize for Applied Arts 2024, opening on November 23rd at Anciens Abattoirs de Mons, Rue de la Trouille 17, Mons, Belgium. The exhibition is running from November 24 until February 16, 2025.

Artist in residency, January till March 2025 at Thread – Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Sinthian, Senegal.