Caroline Wayne is a graduate of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and has a practice based in Queens, New York. Initially a practicing milliner, Wayne began exhibiting original artwork in New York during her fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery in 2017. Her work has since been seen in local spaces including The Salon at The Wing SOHO, Untitled Space, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and The Spring Break Art Show. She has been interviewed by Cultbytes, Create! Magazine, Maake Magazine, Eazel, and pictured in various publications like Forbes Magazine, ELLE DECOR, and Artnet. In 2024 she completed a residency at Wassaic Project, NY, and was profiled in Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy's latest publication New Women's Work. 

 

Wayne uses couture millinery and embellishment techniques to build sculptures that translate the life experience of a survivor of complex trauma through the lens of glittering beadwork, rendering a harrowing reality easier to digest. Detailed beading and cyclical patterning emphasize the consistent labor in the repetitive motion of hand-sewing which mirrors the emotional and psychic labor expended in order to manage the suffering a body can accumulate over time. Wayne stitches her sparkling illustrations of nightmare imagery, direct personal narratives, and markers of status from within the wealthy community she was raised to emphasize how displays of power and glamour can act to gloss over the atrocities we don't want others to see, or that we don't want to look at ourselves.