Cicely Carew
Cicely Carew (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA) is a Boston-based artist, educator, and mind-body facilitator whose multimedia works blur the boundaries between disciplines. Working from a place of improvisation and spiritual embodiment, Carew’s unique language of abstraction signals the transformative power of joy and freedom. Her artistic practice spans immersive installations, collages, sculptural assemblages, painting, and video/sound meditations. This diverse studio output is united by a characteristic vibrancy of color and exuberant gesture extending into the multi-dimensional, inviting viewers to ease into a realm of healing and play. Through an accumulation of layered compositions and materiality, Carew fashions tactile celebrations of the unknown and offers an understanding of the world that transcends the immediately perceptible. In her whimsical and lush ecosystems abounding with infinite possibilities and interpretations, she conveys a mode of re-centering that incites a conscious alignment between heart and mind.
Carew’s public art commissions function on various scales, frequently occupying and energizing space as rooted in her commitment to collective care. Through these spatial interventions, she creates new ways of sensing and being, highlighting the wonder and beauty of human connection. In 2021, Carew completed Ambrosia, a site-specific commission for Boston Properties and Now+There at the Prudential Center. This 5,000 sq. ft. installation took the shape of three-dimensional paintings, inviting viewers to engage with art by walking around and under the suspended mixed-media hybrids, peering through their cascading, ethereal layers. That same year, Peloton commissioned her to create chromatic installations that activated their Chelsea and Madison Avenue storefronts in New York City. In July 2023, she unveiled her public art commission Wishing Well, as part of the Jewish Arts Collaborative’s “Be the Change” initiative, an interactive pyramid meditation space addressing the healing of mental health and ancestral trauma in BIPOC communities. Most recently, her work at the ICA Boston, as part of the 2023 Foster Prize, offered viewers a dynamic engagement with the physical space around them, “amplifying the themes of joy and liberation central to her practice,” as noted by Murray Whyte in The Boston Globe. Carew's installations are an extension of her movement-based healing praxis, inviting viewers to engage with the work beyond the often cursory experience of looking.
Carew completed her MFA at Lesley Art + Design in Cambridge, MA, and her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art + Design, Boston, MA. She has served as an Artist-in-Residence at Shady Hill School, Belmont, MA; taught mixed media and printmaking for the New Art Center, Newton, MA, and Maud Morgan Arts in Cambridge, MA; and screenprinting at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.
Solo exhibitions include the Fuller Craft Museum (forthcoming 2025); ICA Boston (2023); Fitchburg Art Museum (2022); The Commons Provincetown (2021); Simmons University (2020); and Northeastern University (2017). Her work can be found in the permanent collections of Fitchburg Art Museum; the U.S Consulate in Chiang Mai, Thailand; the U.S Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies (AIE); Google; Fidelity Investments; Simmons University’s Ifill Archive; Northeastern University’s Archive; the Cambridge Arts Council; and the Federal Reserve of Boston. Carew’s honors include the ICA Boston’s James and Audrey Foster Prize (2023); Brother Thomas Fellowship (2023); BNY Mellon Blanche E. Colman Award (2022); Cambridge Art Council’s Art for Social Justice Grant (2021); The Stay Home Gallery Residency (2021); and the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2021).
She currently resides with her son in Cambridge, MA.
