Caroline Seckinger is a conceptual and performance artist with a working repertoire of printmaking, drawing, sculpture in metal, fibers, animal skins, bones, feathers plants, stones, wax; film, and digital media. Seckinger counters this diversification of modalities with a honing of her content, focusing her inquiry fairly specifically on a phenomenon in contemporary social and esoteric discourses. The result is a diverse and ambitious body of (art) work that is increasingly conceptual, intellectual, spiritual and political, and yet unrelentingly lyrical and aesthetic.
Seckinger uses low-tech and ancient skills that are the traditional domain of women’s work (carding, spinning, stitching, knitting, knotting, weaving) applying them to the most basic human tasks such as making clothing, tools, shelters, nets, containers and vessels. The often repetitive nature of these working practices permeates both the content and the form of the work, much of which is based on serial presentations and narrative expositions. When she ventures into metal working or brings her very high-tech and modern skills as a film-maker and digital graphic artist to bear on the same set of materials and themes, viewers are invited to consider the relationships between the domestic and public realm, high and lowcraft, and “his and her” work.
Seckinger uses meditative and ceremonial practices within her making to deepen her conversation with the dimensions of all things.
Seckinger is a graduate of University of Santa Cruz (BFA) and California Institute of the Arts (MFA). She has worked as an activist, investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker which has informed her practice as artist as a social lens. She is the recipient of numerous film awards and artist grants.