Solo Exhibition "My Dislocated Home" 2026

Irène Poetschke’s third solo exhibition, “My Dislocated House,” took place from June 11 to 14, 2026, in the Marais district of Paris’s 3rd arrondissement.

Exploring the most intimate landscapes of her unconscious, Irène Poetschke took us on an inner journey exploring the themes of mental dissociation and resilience: she explored the moment when the soul splits into two opposing entities to survive after trauma, in order to rebuild itself and reconnect with its inner child.

What if we were to explore this exhibition as if we were still there?

At the entrance, suspended clouds hold black and white hands, embodying both the dislocation of bodies and the positive and negative thoughts that pass through each of us, with a nod to the black-and-white checkerboard of Irène Poetschke’s very first exhibition.

Then begins a journey into the heart of human duality: light and darkness, memory and becoming, harmony and fragmentation—all of which characterize the paintings that adorn the gallery’s long, wide corridor.

After taking a look at the mirror on which an unknown finger has written “Am I in a dream?” in faux condensation, as if setting the scene, we are welcomed by the warm, luminous colors of the paintings “Transition” and “My Light.”

Then, in the distance, we catch sight of a pink façade that draws us in, featuring two windows and a large door, symbolizing “the Pink House,” which appears throughout this series of paintings; we slowly make our way toward it, admiring on either side the delicacy of “Toward the Mountain” and the clear, overt duality of the diptych “Unfinished Link”: on one side, a woman in the light, and on the other, her counterpart curled up in the darkness, the two connected by braids and, most notably, by a real multifaceted mirror at the center of the diptych, separating the two halves and composed of genuine tree bark inlaid with insects, serving as an anchor to nature.

Then we turn our heads, captivated by the extra-long, twisted nails on the arms of the sculpture “Dream or Reality,” arms topped by a transparent veil as if suspended in the air, another partially unreal, dislocated body part.

Next, we discover four paintings that face one another: on one hand, “She Is Me” and “In Our Cage,” each illustrating the impression of being two people in one; on the other, “The Weight of My House” and “Survival Instinct,” whose characters draw us in with their highly distinctive poses and attitudes, not to mention the many surreal details that compose them.

After taking a look at the long braid in “Memory,” which connects two miniature paintings on wood, we pass through the door of the large pink façade as if entering the “Pink House” from the paintings. We emerge into a light-filled glasshouse where a forest of suspended hair immediately catches our eye: dense, mysterious, and enveloping, it gives form to buried thoughts, dreams, wounds, and emotions, while also referencing the persistence of memory through the ubiquitous braids. At the center of this inner forest entitled “Dislocated,” three half-faces search for one another without ever meeting, serving as a powerful image of the quest for self that we all pursue, amid contradictions, doubts, and aspirations. It is also, we realize, after the hands and arms, another dislocated body part.

In this square space, we find ourselves surrounded by three immense paintings: first, “During the Reunification,” which, with its 3-meter length, majestically occupies an entire wall and can be viewed from afar to appreciate its scale or up close to see all its symbols and details, some measuring no more than 1 cm, visually illustrating the phenomenon of attempting to reconnect after mental dissociation; second, “In My Shared Soul,” a triptych featuring a central figure whose soul is physically split in two amid dual surreal symbols, and from which we quickly realize that it can be closed by operating the two side “shutters” to reveal a second face showing a close-up of a head: when we reopen this triptych, it is as if we were entering the character’s soul; finally, third, “Wing Surrenders,” which moves us with its almost mystical composition and warm colors and is composed of 24 pieces of wood that can be separated like a puzzle… or a scattered soul. As an extension of the reflection in the mirror of this large painting, the blurred series “Parallel Reality,” composed of three miniatures and one larger painting, appears.

At the center of this glasshouse sits “Earthly Armor,” a bust sculpture whose broken heart still shines, with a snake around its neck as a sign of an acknowledged danger, while protecting itself with the spikes and points that adorn it and the roots that emerge from it. It is while walking around this sculpture to see all its details that our eyes then catch another highly symbolic installation, 90 cm high and wide: the recurring little “Pink House,” which becomes real with its pyramidal roof! Through the windows, we can see inside a string of children’s ID photos swinging from a thread, with the triptych “Child’s Soul,” decorating the walls of this miniature house, in the background. A braid escapes from its door, connecting our past—all those childhood memories—to our identity. Behind the house, echoing it, are the miniatures from the “Pink House” series, including “My Two Houses,” while a double-sided mirror decorated with thorny clay roots allows us to see ourselves doubled, like the characters in the paintings.

Thus ends the visit to “My Dislocated House,” with a total of 22 oil paintings, some very large in format, one oil pastel, three sculptures, and two installations, each work accompanied by a poetic text that gives it meaning, all within a scenography that brings the visitor into the world depicted in the paintings.

Irène Poetschke transforms introspection into an immersive experience and reminds us of the duality of our existence.

But why “My Dislocated House”?

The house symbolizes a “safe place,” a refuge that can be battered but remains an anchor to oneself, while the word “dislocated” evokes dissociation, the main theme of the exhibition: these works tell the story of the separation between body and soul, between self and self—two entities that, to survive difficult events, had to detach from one another. We experience all the contradictions faced by these two forces, illustrated by symbols representing the fragmentation and duality that are at the heart of life, as well as metaphorical elements populated by animals and vegetation. Will these two parts of the self reunite? These works capture that fragile moment of balance where this may or may not happen—a present moment whose continuation each person can imagine through their own story.

There is much symbolism in this exhibition, some of which is explained by poetic texts: that of pink, long devalued but here reclaimed as a force; that of the snake, an acknowledged and overcome danger linked to Adam and Eve; and that of the braids, representing memory and the link between the past and the present moment.