In her ceramic sculptures Carolein Smit satirically plays with that unknown turning point when beauty turns over in exuberance, hate in love, alienation in elucidation, and unresolved emotions in over-active sentiment. Smit borrows themes from classic mythology and biblical tales, such as greed, power and impotence, vanity, perishableness and death. Often her sculptures enclose elements like those we find in vanitas, such as skulls, skeletons, small bones of animals; all these elements symbolize our temporary presence, but, as always with Smit, she shows them with a touch of irony.
Carolein Smit graduated in 1984 at the Academy of fine arts, St Joost, Breda, The Netherlands, Specialisation graphics and lithography. It was in 1996 when she was introduced with ceramics at the European Ceramics Work Centre in Den Bosch that she started contemporary ceramic sculptures. Before she worked as an illustrator and painter for which in 1993 she was honorably mentioned in the catalogue of the Prix de Rome for “Drawing". In 1999 she won the Keranovaprize for free sculpting. From the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Design and Architecture she received multiple scholarships. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthal Rotterdam (2010), The Netherlands and Museum Keramion, Frechen, Germany. Her work is in collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany and the Fuled International Museum (FLICAM) Fuping, China. In 2011 her work was added to the Asante collection, Switzerland and the Thomas Olbricht collection, Germany. A special selection from the Thomas Olbricht collection, including a work by Carolein, was shown in Paris, mémoires du futur, la collection Olbricht’ from 22 October 2011 to 15 January 2012 at La Maison Rouge.