Born in Milan in 1981, Carolina Mazzolari studied at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (1999-2001) and at London’s Chelsea College of Art (2000-2003), where she specialised in textiles, dyeing techniques and screen printing.
She launched a dual career in Milan, working as an artist in her own studio and as a designer, and was made Head Designer at Verger Milano (2006 – 2011). Mazzolari’s time at Verger involved frequent visits to the Jacquard factories where she worked with industrial machines and learnt the craft that informs her practice today.
Her experiences directing professional dancers in fashion shoots as well as her photographic portraits of women were also absorbed into Mazzolari’s multi-disciplinary practice.
Based in London since 2014, her practice involves textile manipulation, printing, painting, photography, video, and performance. Her on-going series of tapestries, Emotional Fields, hand-dyed, un-primed linen embroidered in her distinctive grey herringbone stich, resemble abstract woven maps or mandalas and are the materialisation of elusive states of mind, inspired by Kurt Lewin’s space diagrams and Carl Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious.
Video works include Emosphere in which the reaction of sliver pigment with white spirit represents an emotional response in the brain, and a series of moving image portraits of solo performances by female dancers, I Dance Alone (I-III).
Current projects include a site-specific, all-female dance piece featuring Mira Calix and Kristen McNally, and an accompanying film developed from ideas around Mazzolari’s talismanic sculptural sphere, Prayer Wheel Study.
New works by Mazzolari will be exhibited at the gallery in February 2021.