Photo by Amelia Paige
Caroline Wayne (b. 1984, Connecticut, USA), is a graduate of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and has a practice based in Queens, New York. Her work calls on personal history combined with a knowledge of the fashion industry and textile production to think through how we often turn to luxury as escapism in times of existential crisis.
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Wayne uses couture millinery and embellishment techniques to build sculptures illustrated in hand-stitched beading that narrate her own experience of trauma, intimacy, and healing. Her compositions include signifiers of status seen in the wealthy community where she grew up rendered in these specific materials and processes that are often used in trades that exploit children while enriching the already rich, emphasizing 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.
Wayne was a 2017/2018 Fellow at A.I.R. Gallery where she has held two solo exhibitions. Her work has been seen in the New York area since 2017 in spaces including The Salon at The Wing SOHO, Untitled Space, 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. She just returned from a summer residency at Wassaic Project, NY with new projects lined up. Additional announcements scheduled for September.