Cécile Fouillade

Curriculum Vitae

Cécile Fouillade is a young French professional ceramic artist.
Since 2019, her practice has been deeply shaped by artistic residencies in Arctic regions such as Greenland, Iceland and Norway.
She has exhibited in major salons and institutions across France, Italy and the United Kingdom.
She has received several awards, including the Public’s Favourite Prize (2025) and the Young Artistic Craft Prize (2022).
Her maritime residencies form the core of her artistic inspiration.
Her work explores porcelain as a fragile landscape of light, texture and transformation. Polar environments, wildlife and natural materials strongly influence her sculptural language. She also draws inspiration from exploration narratives and photographers of the far north.
She teaches ceramics in various French institutions and collaborated as an executing artist for Loewe’s FW24 show.
Her work has been widely featured in leading art publications.

Inspiration

« Porcelain is, to me, a landscape of light, texture and fragility, constantly shifting. Since 2019, my work has been deeply shaped by residencies in Greenland, Iceland and Norway, where the Arctic’s vast whiteness and raw nature transformed my way of seeing. A formative stay in Greenland, in contact with Inuit communities, led me to draw inspiration from bones, fur, feathers and natural materials essential to life in the North.

I reinterpret these animal textures in porcelain—a non-animal material that can still carry a sense of sacredness. In my “porcelain fur” pieces, each hair is shaped and placed by hand, creating a surface that feels almost alive. This research later expanded to feathers, wool and scales.

My residencies at sea aboard Polarfront, the Knut and Tara continue to deepen my relationship with the environment. Through my work, I aim to honour the beauty of threatened Arctic animals and preserve, through ceramics, what is now at risk of disappearing. »

Technique

Cécile Fouillade has developed a distinctive sculptural technique in which she reinterprets animal textures through porcelain.
She handcrafts each individual porcelain hair and applies them one by one, creating a surface that feels almost alive, reminiscent of fur.
Natural pigments evoke the seasonal colours of Arctic animals, while the meticulous process brings movement, depth and an organic presence to her pieces. In the same spirit, she explores other natural textures such as feathers, wool and scales. By translating these elements into a non-animal, durable material, she gives porcelain a sacred, contemporary dimension.