Caroline Orthlieb is a painter whose work is rooted in feminist art.
Under the name Caro & the Octopus, she reinterprets vintage images and icons from art history to explore women’s desire, pleasure and freedom.
About
The octopus has been with me for a long time.
My first vision of something tentacular is also my earliest artistic memory. I was five, backstage at a musical in Caracas.
I was fascinated by the vast organic machine of people working together to make the magic happen on stage.
Later, I was drawn to the work of an assistant director.
I became like an octopus: seeing the whole picture while keeping each detail within reach of my tentacles.
It is a branching way of thinking and working.
Living in Venezuela, then Finland and China taught me that there are many ways to inhabit the world. Those experiences still shape the way I see: they taught me that a single image can hold more than one truth.
Today, the octopus has become the central figure in my work.
It embodies a eutopian way of approaching the world through touch and caresses, drawing us into tenderness, sensuality, desire and imagination.
Eutopian comes from the Greek eu (“good”) and topos (“place”): a good place, associated here with happiness.