I’m a multimedia artist and theatre/movement maker, now also curator for Theatre Deli Social Model .. and more Festival in Sheffield and London.
For my art, I overlay digital drawing. X-rays and collage on my photography; create installations using recycled packaging; and weave with salvaged fabric. And Im producing performance and video including all of the above.
I’m also a clean air / climate activist. We all have to breathe the air around us. 20,000 times a day. So air quality is everyone’s concern. Even if successive governments aren’t taking effective action.
Before that, I had a 30-year career in Public Health and Emergency Medicine, including on the actively volcanic island of Montserrat, and in the Tuberculosis prisons in Siberia
I have a Masters (Distinction) in Islamic Art and Architecture. SOAS 2009 and have travelled extensively in Iran.
I’ve also worked as an historian:
– Following my work on Montserrat, I transcribed family papers of the Sturges, and transferred them back on-island. Joseph Sturge was an important Quaker abolitionist and activist. So I definitely know that Black Lives Matter!
– In 2008 I exhibited my contemporary photographs of the migration of a Bakhtiari family in the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. It’s on Bakhtiari land that Middle East oil was first found, so – alongside my photos – I also curated an important historical exhibition. I’m the virtual curator of Bakhtiari images.
I’m an alumna participant grant maker / reviewer for Camden Giving
Current/upcoming in 2023:
Dec 22-date: Curating Theatre Deli Social Model… and more festival. We’ve commissioned 8 new theatre pieces to be shown in London and Sheffield in November 2023, alongside workshops and discussions
Nov 22-date: Campaigning for clean air:
– application for a Breathe London sensor in Brunswick Centre successful / sensor installed
– 22 June 2023: London Climate Action Week: walking (actually I’m scooting) across Bloomsbury with a Breathe London monitor, visiting good and bad practice, with practical hints on how to reduce personal pollution exposure.
– 29 October 2023: Bloomsbury Festival: a sensor-ey walk – deferred til Spring 2024 due to dislocated hip.
9 Sept 2023: Dexter’s One Minute Wonder 2023: Yesterday was the hottest day in the history of the World. Radio Resonance.
Aug-Sept 2023: Commissioned to create a tarot card for Theatre Deli pack. Inspired by a seventeenth century card and a pre-Stonehenge lunar calendar in Ireland.
2022:
– Apr-June 2022: Second Look: The Moon in Images. Inspired by the Quran. Dialogue Hub Art Cafe, Waterloo, London.
– 28 Jan 2022: Lest We Forget: Real-life performance at Cockpit Theatre of a piece I wrote / directed as part of Theatre Director Pathways training by Extant.
2021:
– 16 Oct – 28 Nov 2021: Theresa Leung Barter: Outside our windows. I bartered my photos looking out of my windows. Now they’re on show in one of the Satellite Exhibitions of the Hong Kong International Photo Festival.
– 18-30 Oct 2021: Rima Rupa Biennale, Yogyakarta Indonesia: I’m showing Multimorbidity: a new composite digital piece using drawing, X-rays and collage: Participant in disability arts group exhibition.
– 11-15 Oct 2021. Ancient Materials: participant in virtual group residency. Lots of astronomical and geological – and of course artistic – fun. Organised by Mayes Creative
– 7-20 October 2021: A Crash course in Cloudspotting, Participant in group show about rest and horizontality. Coventry City of Culture
Interior. Participant in an exquisite corpse film, where each artist makes a 30-90 second clip having only seen the last shot of the preceding artist. Curated by Sapphire Goss:
– Sept 2021: Being shown at the Strangelove Festival
– Nov 2020: Moving Image Artists Journal. Issue 3
– 31 July 2021: I’m in a Cage: sound piece. Commissioned by Dexter Bentley, for Resonance Radio
– 7 June: On Resonance Radio about my Tree Pillars.
– 7-14 May 2021 onwards: Pillars and Mirrors: My work on urban trees was commissioned as part of In the Meantime with Royal College of Arts/CCA
– Freeweaving Freeswimming. My weave was Exhibited as part of Joygun Nehar’s section within In the Meantime
2020:
– 5 Dec: Finalist in VOSAP Art from the Heart competition.
– 12-22 Nov: Being Human festival with group online exhibition. Participant.
– November: Exquisite Corpse film: Participant in Sapphire Goss’ curated film, where each artist makes a 30-90 second clip having only seen the last shot of the preceding artist.
– Sept-Nov: OneLineLifeLine: Movement and performance with Engage2Stage
– Late October: (Un)forgotten Flora: Online exhibition under the “Creativity from HOME” experimental residency curated by Co-iki. I’ve chosen to focus on Lemon Trees, and the Persian Oak. See my summary film here and details of other international participants here.
– 14 Sept-14 Oct: Participant in Life Interrupted digital exhibition with SEAS (Socially Engaged Art Salon). Exploring the pandemic. Images from my Safe as Houses installation are here.
-Between 30 Sept-4 Oct: On Ancient Earth: Artist talk at webinar / live event in Alice Springs, Australia, as part of Desert Festival Australia
July: Third Wave: Documentary Video about inequalities and Covid-19:
– Special award for Covid Critique. Plus: Runner up in Bertha Dochouse competition.
– 22 July: Interviewed on Resonance 104.4 FM about this film and my installation. https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/smashing-records-22-july-2020-carolin
1 July: One artist’s experience of the lockdown. Current practice and case studies. Arts, Health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group Newsletter, Royal Society pf Public Health, 2020: 1/3;8
1 June: Eye Say Eye Say, Sit down Stand up comedy on Zoom. One of my jokes is the clip on the Extant website.
March-June 2020; Safe as Houses: #isolationcreation installation with multiple 3-d and collage art pieces crammed in my front room. Images on @caromawer . Related:
– 23 June: Art House Project: Group on-line exhibition of Art in Pandemic times;
– 30 May: Malfunction: A One-Minute-Wonder sound piece broadcast by Dexter Bentley;
Mar 2020: Vocalist in group performances of Okwui Okpokwasili’s Sitting on a Mans Head. Tate Tanks. BMW Tate Live. Cancelled due to Covid-19.
Mar 2020: Climate Justice: Workshop leader / lecturer at Whitechapel Ideas Centre. Cancelled due to Covid-19.
Dec 19-Feb 20 Director / Producer for The Giant Green Canary
My first ACE application – to produce a multilingual multicultural climate justice pantomime with six actors, and a ballet chorus of long cane users was declined.
But the learning I got from this was better than any course.
Dec 19-Jan 20: Insight. Leeds University Art Gallery.
2-d art exhibition by visually impaired artists, including my visual jokes: The Blind Cloning the Blind; and I’m Looking Back at You: a Female Gaze
Dec 19-Jan 20: A Crash Course in Cloudspotting: Participant. With my rest recorded on an app and shown in an exhibition of lighting effects.
Alongside my short story: A little rest
July 2019: Green Screen Charivari, Live Arts Development Agency, Leeds. Selected as participant in residential project: including set-design and costume creation.
May 2019: Deathbed Skiing, Tara Arts, Wandsworth Arts Fringe:
– Director and Producer. I wrote the words (which I performed), created digital art, sourced video, and organised tech support and funding. I also choreographed a professional dancer for one section; and sourced live music for the interludes.
– All starting on the side of a mountain, and ending in a Luscious Fruiting Forest of Dreams
Dec 2017 – Jan 2018: Participant in workshops and multiple performances at the Showroom Gallery following Dawn Breaks
Each participant directed, acted and set-designed our own productions, culminated in Free Flow Fictioning:
I worked on ‘How we see Beauty’, as well as the beginnings of Deathbed Skiing