Casey Carsel: I can’t shake the stranger out of you
In their latest solo exhibition, Casey Carsel continues to process the complex composition of self and peoplehood in the Jewish diaspora.
Image: Casey Carsel, detail of ‘What should I be hearing’, 2025
30.08.25
12.10.25
At CoCA, they will expand the symbolist pictorial language of their quilt practice and introduce new possibilities with works in the Jewish papercutting tradition.
Through these forms, Carsel reflects on collective and personal Jewish cultural histories of England and Aotearoa New Zealand in order to come to terms with the fullness of absence and make space for repulsion in what is beautiful and for beauty in what repels.
The Artist
A diasporist participant in queer Jewish spirals towards future histories, Casey Carsel (caseycarsel.com) loves pricking themselves on the sharp beauty of the fragments of the past that tumble down to the present moment. What is cherished and how is it held? What is left behind? What is lost in translation? The experimental and interdisciplinary works that result are imbued by dybbuks, golems, ancestors, and the visual, oral, and written languages that hold them.
The Ōtautahi-born Jewish artist and writer was trained in ceramics, poetry, and fibre at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA in Writing) and Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland (BFA Hons). They have presented solo exhibitions at Comfort Station, Chicago; Co-Prosperity, Chicago; RM Gallery, Auckland; and Blue Oyster Gallery, Dunedin; amongst others. They have facilitated workshops and held fellowships with institutions including Tides Institute & Museum of Art, Fulbright, New York Public Library, and the Center for New Jewish Culture. They live their life between their chosen whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau and Ohio, where they are pursuing a PhD in Art History on Jewish apotropaics in early modern Ashkenaz at The Ohio State University.
