Press Release  November 18, 2019

Beautiful Embroidery Helps Heal an Ugly History of Abuse

New York, NY – A.I.R Gallery is pleased to present Grown Cyclone, the second solo exhibition for Brooklyn-based embroidery artist Caroline Wayne.

Rounded soft felt forms are adorned with sequins, pearls, beads, packed and overlapping like armor. Thumb tacks, pointed side up in a mechanism of defense. Scenes scroll around the circumference of objects like ancient storytelling vessels, depicting distant memories and dreams in which the artist’s own history of sexual trauma is examined. 

Within each sculpture’s apparent beauty, a laborious process, emotional and psychic efforts illustrates Wayne’s lifelong efforts to reshape and help process a complicated and traumatic past. She aims to bring awareness to the suffering a body can accumulate over time through onerous mark-making.

Through the artist’s own cyclical path through healing, she aims to acknowledge the overlooked stories of trauma survivors, where the pain may lay not in the traumatic event itself but in the way one has to navigate their world for a lifetime after.

In Grown Cyclone, Wayne constructs an immersive environment in which one can examine the emotional, psychological, and vibrational labor expended in order to survive life after trauma. Along with several new embroidered totem pieces, the artist has developed full-scale wall drawings, and an unflinching mini memoir detailing tales of sex, dating, and love based on common patterns of trauma bonding. This book, also titled Grown Cyclone will be on view in the gallery.

About the Artist: Caroline Wayne is a fiber artist and narrative essayist living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in fiber and material studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was awarded a Fellowship at AIR Gallery in 2018. Her work is currently on display at The Wing locations was recently included in the Phillip Johnson Glass House annual summer gala. Wayne is also a professional couture milliner.

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