Raw gesture meets exquisitely rendered form on bare linen — spontaneity and control, caught mid-collision.
Organic forms drift and breathe on bare linen — paintings that ask to be stood in front of. Slowly.
Special Project · Nepal Residency
For three months, Caroline Pera lived inside a Nepalese orphanage — not as a visitor, but as part of the household. She painted the children's faces with precision and love. Then she handed them the brush and stepped back.
They picked their own materials. Pure pigment from Nepal — the same pigments used to paint their faces and bodies in ceremony and ritual — and with them they painted themselves larger than I had made them.
They gave themselves wings, bodies that filled the whole canvas, colours that had nothing to do with reality and everything to do with truth. A two-year-old child, Sanchita, painted herself in yellow — great sweeping arcs of yellow — surrounding her own face like a force field, like light, like something that could not be contained.
Pera self-organised the exhibition in an abandoned historical children's cinema in central Milan. The paintings lined the room; a film of the children was projected live onto an installation at its heart. The show later travelled to Artifact Gallery, Manhattan.
A photography series from the Shiva Festival, Kathmandu.
About the Artist
Her work moves between the deeply interior and the expansively gestural — from the meditative oils on bare linen of the Flow and Pulse series, to the profoundly human Painted Identity project, born from a three-month residency inside a Nepalese orphanage.
Flow — inspired by Lao Tzu's philosophy of effortless becoming — has become her most celebrated series. Pulse, her most recent body of work, pushes further: raw gesture meets exquisitely rendered form, held in a tension that is both confrontational and tender.
Works held in the private collections of Etro, Loro Piana, and financier Claudio Costamagna. Exhibited internationally across Milan, London, Vienna, New York, and Birmingham.
Contact
For acquisition enquiries, exhibition proposals, or press — please reach out directly. Caroline responds to all enquiries personally.
Caroline undertakes select commissions by arrangement.
+39 340 631 1365
Milan, Italy
Complete Collection · 12 Works
Exhibition view · Cinema Arti · Milan
