Women United ART PRIZE 2023
Photography & Printmaking Category
finalist

ARTIST BIO

Caroline is an interdisciplinary artist. She spends her time creating woven wearables that explore folkloric familial nostalgia. She likes to dress up in her art and dance, further fulfilling her life goal of becoming a fool with authority. Caroline holds an M.F.A from Pratt Institute and currently works as the Studio Arts Specialist at Blue School in lower Manhattan. Her work has appeared in group shows throughout New York and New Jersey, and Internationally in Iceland and Italy. She currently lives and creates in Brooklyn with her wife Karen and kid, Sal.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My photographic work explores the concept of power and myth through textiles and masks. Masked creatures, powerful and free, protected and proud. I draw upon my own cultural histories of mask wearers, elements of power and kink, and historical scenes of concealment. Masks denote power from the unknown, offer a costume for the jester, a shield for the fragile, and freedom from self. I want to dress up in costume and be something else, a different version of myself. I put on the mask, I become another part of me. I want to be hidden and completely present. I want to be vulnerable and protected.

The masks, or wearables, are made of scavenged materials ranging in process from crochet, knit, sewn, or woven textiles. My work engages these wearables within a familial folkloric narrative. I am exploring my own lore through textiles and play.
The Invisible Móðir series exemplifies the concept of being hidden and completely present in plain sight. I am a myth in the making while chasing the myth of the mother.

For me, the Móðir series references the Victorian images, while also referencing the amorphous entity that is a mother. I feel mother non-conforming, unsure of how I am a part of and embody the role, and yet I twist and turn myself into whatever is needed for my child daily. Many former selves are now in the shadows of this bigger thing that has muscled in—mother. The historical photographs of mothers concealed under heavy textiles holding their children in order to capture a photo have always struck me for their comical and creepy lengths mothers go for their children. After having my child, these images feel like the truest record of the chaos wrapped in a bow.

Brooklyn, NY / United States