Carole Frances Lung (born 1966) is an American artist and labor activist, known for her

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

which centers around subjects such as textile consumption, unfair labor practices, and production systems. Lung is an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

of Fashion Fiber and Materials at

California State University, Los Angeles California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public university in Los Angeles, California. It is part of the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degrees, 122 master's degrees, ...

. Her work concerns labor in the fashion industry and often comprises long-duration projects of performance art and collaborative art activism. She is based in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

Early life and education

Carole Frances Lung was born in 1966 in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. She was raised in

Huntington Beach Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County in Southern California, located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. The city is named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 during the 2020 census, maki ...

. Lung received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in Textiles and Clothing from

North Dakota State University North Dakota State University (NDSU, formally North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Sciences) is a public land-grant research university in Fargo, North Dakota. It was founded as North Dakota Agricultural College in 1890 as t ...

in 1988. She moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to work in the fashion design industry. Lung studied Fiber and Material Studies at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

, receiving a BFA degree in 2005 and a MFA degree in 2007. During a 2006 semester abroad in

Weimar, Germany Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg an ...

, she studied Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the

Bauhaus University The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is a university located in Weimar, Germany, and specializes in the artistic and technical fields. Established in 1860 as the Great Ducal Saxon Art School, it gained collegiate status on 3 June 1910. In 1919 the sc ...

. There she engaged in her performance piece "One Size Fits All," sewing out of a storefront.

Career

Carole Frances Lung has almost fifteen years of experience working in the garment industry. She uses her art as a form of activism which makes statements on various topics, such as

mass production Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch ...

and

consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...

, and the value of thoughtfully made clothing. Lung's project ''Sewing Rebellion'' has as its goal to break the mass-production cycle of consumer textiles, and involves teaching participants to make and repair clothing. Her project， ''Made in Haiti'' (2009-2012) was a collaboration with Haitian tailors to create an alternative to the mass globalized textile market. Lung has also created performance art under the persona "Frau Fiber," an East German garment worker. Frau Fiber was born in

Apolda Apolda () is a town in central Thuringia, Germany, the capital of the Weimarer Land district. It is situated in the center of the triangle Weimar–Jena– Naumburg near the river Ilm, c. east by north from Weimar. Apolda station lies on the Hal ...

, Germany in 1966 and worked in garment and machine knitting factories until the fall of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

. Frau Fiber takes inspiration from the folk character John Henry; knitting or sewing by hand against faster technology, knowing that ultimately she will fail.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lung, Carole Frences 1966 births Living people American women artists School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni American performance artists People from Huntington Beach, California California State University, Los Angeles faculty 21st-century American women