Caroline Amond (b.1997) is an emerging visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University in 2019 and a MFA in Art from CUNY Brooklyn College in 2024. Caroline has exhibited in an assortment of exhibitions across New York (Powerhouse Arts, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery) and has received multiple awards (Morris Dorsky and Rose Goldstein Memorial Scholarship) for her artistic contributions. Her work was featured on Artnet’s “Best Work of 2024: 11 Standouts We Saw Globally.” Amond’s bold paintings challenge conventional beauty standards and provoke viewers to decode the layered symbolism and iconography imbues within each work. She focuses on allegorical themes and prioritizes the female gaze, while also reflecting on the post-internet culture in which she was raised.

Statement

I am particularly interested in the tradition of Venus paintings and how Venus is not allowed to look at the viewer. I coin my paintings “Oppositional Venuses" who stare back. I consider the figures in my paintings to be cartoons, with a majority of their configurations consisting of the stick figure and the glyph of Aries (Mars), the opposite planet of Venus. I use the idea of the cartoon and its linework to shed light on the comical yet absurd commentary that women face daily, digitally or in real life. In an era shaped by post-internet culture, where visual language is driven by algorithms, rapid consumption, and endless reproduction, I explore how these forces shape visual economies, influencing perception, identity, and power dynamics. I analyze American advertisements related to weapons and food and how they can be used to target, sexualize, and alienate women. I'm also interested in barring viewers from objectifying my paintings by working with indecipherable symbols, plays on space/gravity, and creating flatness/vacancy. In my work, I ultimately encourage the viewers to legitimize and synthesize diverse relationships to beauty and to assert their own agency against outdated notions of femininity.