Valerie Carew

Valerie Carew (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist who explores human relationships with land using body based sculpture, installation, painting, fibre craft and performance. Immersive role-play is combined with sculptural rug making to express relationships with land, dwelling, identity and self exploration. Valerie's sculptural works are designed for interplay and physical contact with the human body. Narratives are made using nostalgia and myth-making. Memories of land and home are harnessed for new world building, designed from a desire for connection and escapism. Carew hopes to re-wild and unsettle the colonial footprint through art, and create relationships between inside and outside worlds.

Carew is an award winning graduate from the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design Program at OCAD University, where she received two scholarships and the 2016 Outstanding Exhibition award for her thesis Enclosure Movement: Comparative Dwelling and Embodiment (2016). She is a recipient of grant funding from Canada Council For The Arts to perform her piece Body Coiling at Craft @ The Edge Conference in Bona Vista, Newfoundland (2020), and has exhibited and delivered art talks internationally. Some of her textile work can be viewed at the Craft Ontario Gallery and Shop in Toronto.

Carew references Canadian ecosystems in Ontario, Quebec and costal areas in Newfoundland. These areas are the contemporary and ancestral territories of the Algonquin, Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Haudenosauee, Annishnaabe, Huron-Wendat, Mi’kmag and Beothuk Nations.