artcase · Christine Sefolosha

Found and figured, by Christine Selofosha

Christine Sefolosha gathers remnants — fabrics, found objects, discarded wood — and brings them to life. With every fragment, she builds beings that seem to carry centuries within them. Her figures are not simply made; they feel summoned.

Memory, intuition, and mystery

Her materials come from the margins, yet her characters occupy the centre — solemn, weathered, luminous. With needle, charcoal or pigment, she gives voice to what was once lost.It is not just art. It is invocation.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1955 in Montreux, Switzerland, Christine Sefolosha has lived a life shaped by travel, introspection and creation. Though known for her solitary artistic practice, her work speaks in many voices. Through found objects, thread, and layered textiles, she constructs figures that seem to carry ancestral memories. Often overlooked by the mainstream, her art reveals a world where discarded materials become vessels of myth, spirit, and silent histories.

Expression

Christine Sefolosha’s work lies in its layered materiality and evocative presence. Created with thread, cloth, and found objects, her figures seem woven from fragments of forgotten stories. There is no clear narrative, no definitive explanation, only the sense that each piece carries a memory older than language. This ambiguity invites interpretation, allowing viewers to project their own meaning onto works that resist categorisation yet speak with quiet intensity.

Found objects

Some artists paint, others assemble worlds. Christine Sefolosha does the latter — using worn textiles, splintered wood, old nails and thread, she constructs figures that feel both ancient and intimate. Her process is deeply tactile, almost ritualistic. Each piece begins with a found object, something marked by time, which she then layers with fabric, ink, and intuition. The result is not sculpture in the traditional sense, but a kind of stitching of presence,ghostly yet grounded. Sefolosha doesn’t simply repurpose materials; she listens to them. Her figures emerge slowly, shaped by hand, memory, and silence. In their texture lies a quiet force, an archaeology of emotion, sewn from the overlooked and the discarded.

ARTWORK

Stitching Identity in Silence

Christine Sefolosha finds inspiration in the traces of everyday life, discarded fabrics, forgotten objects, and the marks left by time.

Photograph from selofosha.com.

Drawing from these humble materials, she creates figures that embody stories untold, weaving memory and identity through threads and textures. Her work reflects a profound dialogue between material and meaning, where each piece is both a tribute to the past and an exploration of presence.

HERITAGE

Christine Selofosha’s work challenges boundaries between craft and art

Her use of found objects and textiles to create haunting figures positions her within outsider art, yet her sophisticated technique and intentionality spark debate about classification. This tension between the raw and the refined, the marginal and the recognized, makes Selofosha a compelling and controversial figure in the contemporary outsider art scene.

Christine Selofosha brings her characters to life through found objects and fabrics, and she is also deeply involved in every stage of their creation. She carefully selects, sews, and manipulates materials with meticulous precision, giving each piece a unique presence rich with history.

Through printmaking, she explores texture, form, and narrative, crafting images that resonate with the same emotional intensity as her fabric sculptures.

Her prints, like much of her work, remained private and unseen during her lifetime

Her works are not mere assemblages, but visual narratives woven with threads and memories, reflecting an intimate and complex universe where art becomes an act of memory and transformation.

These engravings reveal another layer of her artistic vision, delicate yet powerful, they translate her intricate inner world onto paper with precision and depth.

Her prints are quiet testimonies to a creative voice that existed largely beyond public view, enriching the outsider art landscape with subtle complexity.

Photographs from selofosha.com.

Each of Christine Selofosha’s pieces stands as a silent testament to her inner universe, where found objects and threads come alive to tell stories of identity, memory, and transformation. Her work invites quiet contemplation, unveiling layers of meaning that challenge conventions and enrich the dialogue surrounding outsider art.

About the artist

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Unspoken, undone, by Gígja Thoroddsen

Trembling lines, figures that seem to recall something never spoken.
She drew on whatever was at hand, as if the paper, too, remembered.
Her gestures were quiet, but never timid, they carried the weight of what could not be said out loud. Her work didn’t shout, yet it never asked for silence.
It lingered in the space between memory and dream, where truth feels like a rumour.
It was intimate, raw, inevitable.
Like praying without knowing to whom and doing it anyway.

Photograph from SARPUR.is.

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