Bérénice Gaça Courtin – Textile, Code, Performance

Bérénice Gaça Courtin’s practice begins with a machine and a story. Her point of departure is an electromechanical device once used for encryption and resistance, which she translates into the logic of the loom. What emerges is not nostalgia, but a precise inquiry into how knowledge, power and memory are structured and transmitted.

Working across textile, installation and performance, Gaça Courtin treats weaving as a language system. Jacquard looms, handwoven structures and digital projections intersect, allowing symbols, codes and figures to circulate between material and screen. The works do not illustrate technology. They enact it through rhythm, repetition and encoded pattern. Textile becomes a site where binary logic, myth and manual labor coexist without hierarchy.

Participation often plays a central role. In collective looms and live performances, viewers are invited to activate the work, triggering sound or projection through touch and movement. These gestures recall both ancestral craft and contemporary interfaces. References to resistance networks, pagan figures and coded systems of knowledge appear not as narrative devices, but as structural elements embedded in the weave itself.

Courtin’s work has been presented in institutional and experimental contexts, including Centre Pompidou Metz, HEAD Geneva, Fabienne Levy Gallery and Jungkunst Winterthur. Across these settings, her practice remains consistent in one aspect: weaving is not treated as medium alone, but as an operative system for thinking through encryption, collaboration and survival.

Bérénice Gaça Courtin on Instagram

Bérénice Gaça Courtin: Artworks, Exhibition Views and Performances: