Born in 1960 in Amersfoort, Carolein Smit represents a unique and powerful voice in the landscape of contemporary ceramics. Trained at the AKV St. Joost in Breda, where she specialized in graphic arts and lithography, Smit initially pursued a career as an illustrator, collaborating with various magazines and newspapers for over a decade. However, it was her residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre in Den Bosch in 1995 that marked a decisive turning point in her journey: here, she discovered the expressive power of clay, which would become her medium of choice.

Smit's sculptures are characterized by an aesthetic that blends the grotesque with the sublime, as the artist explores concepts of fragility, decay, and transience, often evoking the iconography of 17th-century Vanitas. Her subjects, frequently animals or anthropomorphic figures, seem to transport the viewer into a world suspended between myth and medieval bestiaries, where the adorable merges with the sinister. Smit manages to imbue these creatures with an almost sacred dimension, evoking the delicacy and emotional depth of Gothic and Flemish sculptures, but with a distinctly contemporary language.

Each of Smit's works is crafted using white clay with low chamotte content, allowing her to achieve smooth and detailed surfaces enriched with glazes that give the sculptures a fragile, almost translucent appearance. Her figures incorporate potent symbolism, transforming them into talismans that stage the complex ambiguity between protection and danger, allure and repulsion.

Carolein Smit's work has been exhibited in major European institutions, such as the Kunsthal in Rotterdam and the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, and her sculptures are part of the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2024, CARLOCINQUE Gallery will host the artist's first solo exhibition in Italy, offering the Italian public a unique opportunity to experience the expressive power of her sculptures up close.