I’m a multimedia artist and theatre/movement maker. 2023 : 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
2024:
March/April: Part of New Voices for Global Generation : London Mayoral manifesto around air quality
Feb: Arts & Health Hub critiques: I presented my Wake, Wash, Work photo/drawing/text oct-typch
2023:
Dec 22-Jan 24: Curator for 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
Iran-related work:
Tutor for ISEA Programme at Leighton House: Collecting and Display of Islamic Art. Lecturing on the 1910 Munich exhibition; the 1931 Burlington House exhibition; and Poland as a portal for ‘oriental’ trading in the seventeenth century. Oct-Dec 2014.
Air pollution in Iran, British Medical Journal 2014; 348: g1586
An Armenian Merchant and the Vasa Tapestries. Presentation at Warwick University conference: Global Commodities: The Material Culture of Early Modern Connections, 1400-1800. 12-14 December 2012
Imagined geographies of Isfahan. Presentation at 11th International Conference on Urban History, European Association for Urban History, held in Prague, Czech Republic on 29 August to 1 September 2012
Polish Relations: the Vasa Silk Kilims, Hali 172 Summer 2012. About a carpet-buying trip to Iran from Poland in 1601
Shah Abbas and the Pilgrimage to Mashhad, Iran 2011 XLIX 123-47
Three British Ladies in Bakhtiariland, Asian Affairs 2011 XLII No.1 28-48
Travelling in Safavid Persia: Following in the footsteps of Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa. Book chapter in: Estudos sobre Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa e os “Comentarios” da embaixada a Persia (1614-1624). Vol 4. CHAM. Lisboa 2011
How to build a mosque: a lecture on the construction of the Sulemaniye mosque in Istanbul. Rumi Centre, London. 3 Dec 2009
Lecturer and Course designer: Birkbeck University / British Museum. Jan-April 2009. Shah Abbas the Great: the splendour of power.
Shah Abbas the Great: tracing the 1000km walk from Isfahan to Mashhad, Journal of the Iran Society 2009. 2 No.8 7-23.
With verbal report on 2008 Iran Society Travel Award. 21 Apr 2009
The 1601 walk of Shah Abbas from Isfahan to Mashhad. E-publication following a CIERA séminaire international. Caravansérails et routes caravanières: Etat des savoirs et inventaires. 25 et 26 juin 2009. Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val-de-Seine.
British museum gallery talk: Islamic tiles in context: from Iranian buildings to the British Museum. 16 May 2009
Ways to See Beauty. Platform Lecture on Islamic architecture and geometry. Winchester School of Art. 11 Dec 2008.
Oriental light. Star letter: British Archaeology 2007 Nov-Dec
The Greatness that was Parthia. Lecture Review, Vladimir G Lukonin Memorial Lecture, British Museum, London, 10 July 2007
Degrees and courses:
MA, Islamic Art & Architecture:
School of Oriental and African Studies, U. of London, 2006 – 2009
Grade: Distinction
My dissertation was a case study approach to methodological approaches to Safavid ceramics. I also worked in detail on transmission of design in Ottoman architecture; the provincial architecture of Bayezid II; Islamic art exhibitions (1850-1931); as well as studying the anthropology of urban space, place and architecture; and the art & archaeology of the Silk Road.
Arts of Asia Certificate
Victoria & Albert Museum, 2007 – 2008
My dissertation was on Public perceptions of Islamic Art exhibitions. I also worked in detail on a cuerda seca tile from Khargerd madrese; the Fremlin carpet; and a figure of Guan Di in white porcelain
Archaeology: basic methods: theory and practice
Summer school affiliated to SOAS, 2007
I am now ‘certified’ to work on digs.