Carole Frances Lung
Carole Frances Lung is an artist, activist, Scholar. Through her alter ego Frau Fiber, Carole utilizes a hybrid of playful activism, cultural criticism, research and spirited crafting of one of a kind garment production performances She investigates the human cost of mass production and consumption, addressing issues of value and time through the thoroughly hand-made construction and salvaging of garments. Her performances have been exhibited at Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland, Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, Chicago IL, Ben Maltz Gallery, OTIS College of Art and Design, LA CA, Catherine Smith Gallery, Appalachian State University Boone NC and the Ghetto Biennale Port Au Prince Haiti. Publications include: Chicago Arts News, American Craft Council: Shaping the Future of Craft, Art in America, and Art Papers. She has lectured at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Feminism and Co series, Craftivsim; Creativity and Ingenuity Symposium, at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, in Deer Isle, Maine and this fall she will present during the Material Matters panel, Made in Haiti, at the Textile Society of America symposium in Washington DC. She is currently Assistant Professor Department of Art, Fashion and Textile option at California State University Los Angeles.
My great grandmother was a tailor, my grandmother was a seamstress and accomplished in the art of domestic craft. I was taught by my grandmother to sew my own clothes. I worked as a professional seamstress, cutter, pattern maker, production manager and designer. These experiences, coupled with the current globalization of the apparel industry and it’s effects on day-to-day living, are the foundation for my art practice. A methodical investigation into the human cost of the mass production and consumption of the apparel industry is applied to performative projects that address issues of labor, value and time through the thoroughly hand-made construction and salvaging of garments. Developing a global nomadic practice where I undertake the work of making transparent the production practices of the apparel industry, displaying them in open spaces such as storefronts, nomadic production facilities and personal exchanges. My project based artistic practice stems from qualitative research questioning the how and why of societies engagement with the globalized commerce of mass production and consumption in the apparel and textile industry. This process of researching and questioning gleans information and imagery which allows me to re-contextualize garment production. These activist performances instigate the audience in a dialog of domestic craft production memories, and the possibility of the formation of alternative textile and garment economies.