Olympe Vessel references the life of French feminist Olympe de Gouges, who lost her head during the French Revolution for speaking out against a patriarchal world. De Gouges was a playwright and political activist whose views and demands made her an enemy of the system she sought to make more equal. Even though the goalposts have shifted from brutal decapitation to more insidious forms of silencing, challenging the status quo remains difficult and risky for marginalised people in an increasingly inequitable world.

As a direct ancestor of Bencke, de Gouges’ words carry a personal power. Ignoring the confines of history, her views still feel strikingly contemporary—as if written for our own time. Bencke uses merino wool felt to construct a vessel that appears to have been discovered in fragments and carefully repaired. One side is stitched with a direct quote from de Gouges’ writing; the other shows her decapitated head, symbolising her brilliant mind, cradled in the artist’s own hand—the past held by the present.