Charlotte Koenen: Afterimage
16 June to 25 October 2026
Charlotte Koenen presents a large-scale installation in the Atrium, developed from her research into nineteenth-century lavoirs: historic washhouses in the French countryside. Once vibrant, collective workspaces, these sites now remain mainly as traces of use in worn floors and basins.
Where
SCHUNCK Glaspaleis
Price
Toegankelijk met museumticket
In this installation, Charlotte Koenen explores the interplay between the architecture of the washhouse and the surface of the water.
Materiality plays a key role in her work. For this installation, Koenen felled trees in France and then, together with others, hewed the timber square using an axe — a traditional technique in which a tree trunk is shaped into a rectangular beam. On the floor lies a light-sensitive gelatin, blue-green like the water of a basin. In this shifting surface, prints of photographs emerge that Koenen took of washhouses in the French region where she grew up. In doing so, she connects personal memories with her interest in the fragility of cultural heritage.
The installation, titled Afterimage, refers to the visual impression that remains on the retina after the original image has disappeared. Like the lavoirs themselves: places that have lost their function but continue to linger as echoes in the landscape.
The timber framework structure was produced in close collaboration with Thomas Hütten.
Detail klei afdruk
Het historische washuis waar Charlotte Koenen werkte en waar de klei afdrukken gemaakt zijn
About Charlotte Koenen
Charlotte Koenen (1992) lives and works in Maastricht. She grew up in Belgium and France. In 2014, she graduated from the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design. From 2015 to 2016, she was a participant at the Jan van Eyck Academie. In 2022, she received the O-68 Award, a prize from Art Gallery O-68 supporting artists at a key stage in their careers.
Charlotte Koenen