Northern born Caroline Cardus is an artist activist in the Disability Arts Movement
Text and narrative is an important part of Cardus' work, which is often about distilling an idea down to its simplest form. Cardus works collaboratively as well as individually to tell stories of lived experience from disability and feminist perspectives.
Her groundbreaking protest art piece The Way Ahead was provocatively launched on 1st October 2004 when new anti-discrimination legislation was introduced in the UK. Since then, the exhibition has been continual demand as a Disability Art protest piece. It is now part of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA), and an updated version, The Way Ahead 2021 is available for hire.
Cardus was a recipient of the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary in 2011, resident at BALTIC in Gateshead, where she charted Disability Rights Activist Barbara Lisicki’s dark journey through the NHS by exchanged text messages, in A Message from Barbara.
In 2018 and 2019 Cardus worked with Tate Modern, first on the LDN WMN project with Tate Collective, producing a public art installation, Fight On. In 2019 she worked with Tate’s social and curatorial team and Better Bankside on a poster campaign, From The Other Side, producing an image called What Did You Think She Was Gonna Do?
In July 2022 Cardus was part of 30 disabled artists taking part in a nationwide DaDa intervention in galleries called We Are Invisible, We Are Visible (#WAIWAV) funded by DASH Arts. Her intervention, FED UP, was shown at Milton Keynes Gallery.
Cardus also works as a creative producer, advocate and mentor for other artists.