Valerie Carew, (she/her) is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist who explores human relationships with land using body based sculpture, installation, painting, fibre craft practice and performance. Immersive role-play is combined with sculptural rug making to express relationships with land, dwelling and identity. Valerie's sculptural works are designed for interplay and physical contact with the human body. Memories of land and home are harnessed for new world building, designed from a desire for connection and escapism. Carew hopes to re-wild and unsettle the colonial footprint through art, while designing a connection between inside and outside worlds.

Carew's east coast roots- the settler cultures of Newfoundland and New Brunswick, have influenced her experiences within the wilds of Canada as well as her art making. Traditional methods of hand hooked rug making, such as material reuse, pictorial storytelling and folklore are re-configured into contemporary, immersive wearables and three dimensional, mechanical sculptures.

Carew is an award winning graduate from the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design Program at OCAD University (2016) where she received two scholarships and the 2016 Outstanding Exhibition Award for her thesis Enclosure Movement: Comparative Dwelling and Embodiment. She is a recipient (2020) of grant funding from Canada Council For The Arts to attend Craft @ The Edge, and has exhibited and delivered art talks internationally. She was featured in Fibre Art Now Magazine (Summer/Fall 2021).

Carew references Canadian ecosystems such as fallow farmland in Ontario and costal areas in Newfoundland. These areas are the contemporary and ancestral territories of the Algonquin, Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Haudenosaunee, Annishnaabe, Huron-Wendat, Mi’kmaq and Beothuk Nations.