Felisha María Carénage uses cultural commodities in painting, installations and performances to explore ambiguities in desire and belonging. Born in Trinidad and Tobago and formerly based in Paris, she is currently resident in London and Berlin.

Her postgraduate research, HEIMATSCHUTZ, examined ethics and aesthetics of empire in Schleswig-Holstein’s harbour cities. It was researched and shown in programmed exhibitions at the Maritime Museum in Kiel and the St. Nikolas Church in Flensburg, in 2022 and 2023. In 2024 it was shown at the Palais für aktuelle Kunst in Glückstadt, and at GEDOK in Lübeck.

In development since 2021, Madwoman is an illustration and garment project that began as an exploration of gendered and racialized violence in public and private space; its latest iteration looks at prescriptive language in mental health care systems in Germany, the Caribbean and the UK.

These and other works are in dialogue with initiatives for civic engagement, art and design archives and participative institutional spaces, including Cake&Cash curatorial collective at Hamburg's Fine Art University, FREIRAUM at the Museum of Applied Arts in Hamburg, Flensburg Postkolonial, the National Library and the National Museum of Wales. Felisha's most recent interventions were at and Ruby Cruel in London, MARKK Hamburg, Talking Object Lab’s La Palabre and SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin.

From 2017 until 2023, Felisha was an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art and Design; her last series of seminars and workshops, Unbehagen Pflegen (Caring for Discomfort), underlined the role of decolonial thought as integral – rather than peripheral – to german art and design education and practise. She is currently on hiatus from teaching.

Since January, 2024 she has been focusing on her studio practice as a participant in BPA// Berlin program for artists. Find past and upcoming events here.