Pretty Real
Caroline Wayne
Gallery III
Stuffed, 2017, felt, glass beads, sequins, thumbtacks, 8.5 x 6.5 x 6.5 in.
March 16 - April 15, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, March 16th, 6 - 8PM
DUMBO’s First Thursday Art Walk: April 5, 6 - 8PM
The exhibition Pretty Real by Fellowship Artist Caroline Wayne presents a collection of embellished sculptures depicting scenes from dreams that symbolically recount her own history of early childhood incest. Wayne uses meticulous beadwork in its apparent beauty, containment, and laborious process in order to translate her lifelong efforts to reshape a traumatic past into more palatable innuendos than stark ugly truth. Though rife with phallic weaponry, contentious battle scenes, or shadowy figures in the midst of an assault, her illustrations include playful symbols of childhood and recreation applied in soft shining colors making otherwise horrifying revelations seem only attractively unsettling.
Speaking Real invites women and women identifying survivors of sexual assault to gather Thursday April 12th to share, listen, and support one another. In the wake of current media culture exposing predators on the national stage the host has felt at once vicariously vindicated and ignored like all the other survivors whose abusers aren’t deemed important enough for public interest. Speaking Real offers the relief to sit in a room with like-minded people, hear from the overlooked, and if comfortable, speak for yourself knowing that those around you are listening.
Photography by Sebastian Bach