Caroline Mesquita (b. 1989, Brest) lives and works in Marseille. Her work spans sculpture, installation and stop-motion video, primarily incorporating metals such as sheets of copper and brass, which are altered, oxidised and painted. She is best known for her metallurgic tableaux and installations, sometimes incorporating patinated brass magpies or humanoid sculptures which interact with each other playfully. Her work is as much the artist’s creation as it is autonomous: after folding, squeezing and hammering the metal by hand, then colouring it with ammonia, chloride and various acids, Mesquita relinquishes creative control to forces which oxidise and patinate. In this sense, though they are comprised of lifeless materials, her creations are imbued with their own unique personality.
Selected solo exhibitions include: Quiet Splash, PEANA, CDMX; Compagnons, Centre d’art Bastille, Grenoble, FR; Verdet bath, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Graz; The Ballad, Bourse du travail Centre d’art, VAL, ESP; Art Club, Villa Médicis, RM, IT; Noctambules, CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, and Humans and animals, UP; Art Basel Statements, Basel. Selected group exhibitions include: Le sens de l’orientation, Galerie Andréhn-Schiptjenko, PR; Future in now, Le Parvis Centre d’art contemporain, Tarbes; Une nouvelle jeunesse, Contemporaine de Nîmes, Nîmes; Modernités cosmiques, Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence; and La diosa verde, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guad, MX, amongst others. Upcoming solo exhibitions include: Kunsthal Gent, Gand.