Caroline Wong (b. 1986 Ipoh, Malaysia) is a British-Malaysian-Chinese artist based in London. Following her Diploma in Contemporary Portraiture from The Art Academy, London, she completed a Masters in Fine Art, City and Guilds of London Art School in 2021. Wong explores female desire, primarily through colourful, cluttered scenes of women dining, drinking, or dozing, often in the company of cats. Mirroring the gluttonous girls in her works, she likens her process to indulging, satiating, and — to quote Bonnard — retrieving ‘the savour of things’. Blending party detritus with lushly patterned party dresses, and saturated, saccharine hues with smudged, scribbly pastel, Wong’s tableaux are ultimately a gleeful celebration of excess: a marriage of the carnivalesque and the decorative, the chaotic and the ornate, the feral and the feminine. Her work depicts and embodies hunger in its most literal sense, shaped by an obsessive relationship with food, but hints also at other underlying appetites, desires, and manias in life.
Solo Exhibitions include Girls who Devour, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2026); Feline Theatre, Berliner Ensemble Theater, Berlin, Germany (2024); Hungry Women, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, UK (2024); Art Düsseldorf, Soy Capitán, Düsseldorf, Germany (2024); Picnics and Parties, Gallery Belenius, Stockholm, Sweden (2024); Eternal Summer, Castello di San Basilio, Pisticci, Italy (2023); A Many-Splendoured Thing, Rusha & Co, Los Angeles, USA (2023); Artificial Paradises, Soho Revue, London, UK (2022); Cats and Girls, Soy Capitán, Berlin, Germany (2022).
Group Exhibitions include (Upcoming) Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London, UK (2026); (Upcoming) Tainted Love, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2026); (Upcoming) Soho Revue, London, UK (2026); The Power of Small Things, Soy Capitán, Berlin, Germany (2025); Myths, Dreams and New Realities, with Bagri Foundation, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2025); It’s the End of the World, Let’s Dance, Ames Yavuz, Singapore (2025); Belenius, Kiaf Seoul, Seoul, Korea (2024); Flawless Waltz, Soy Capitán, Berlin, Germany (2024); Drawing Biennial 2024, Drawing Room, London, UK (2024); Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Auction 2024, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2024); ARCO 2024, Soy Capitán, Madrid, Spain (2024); Passage of Time, Soy Capitán, Berlin, Germany (2023); Contested Bodies, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, UK (2023); Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, UK (2023); Art Düsseldorf, Soy Capitán, Düsseldorf, Germany (2023); You Were Bigger than the Sky, You Were More Than Just a Short Time, Gallery Belenius, Stockholm, Sweden (2023); Fetish, MAMA, London, UK (2023); Face to Face, Gillian Jason Gallery, London, UK (2022); Angels with Dirty Faces, Ojiri Gallery, London, UK (2022); Go Figure!, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London, UK (2022); À la carte, Tchotchke Gallery, New York, USA (2022); Eat Drink Man Woman, 180 Strand, London, UK (2022); Friends and Family, Pi Artworks, London, UK (2022); In the Land of Cockaigne, Quench Gallery, Margate, UK (2022); The Dinner Table, Sanmei Gallery, London, UK (2021); ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London, UK (2021); MA Show, City and Guilds of London Art School, London, UK (2021); Drawn Out, Drawing Room, London, UK (2021); Drawing Biennial 2021, Drawing Room, London, UK (2021).
Highlights and Awards
Caroline Wong has received notable recognition including the Liberty Specialty Markets Art Prize and the Society of Women Artists' Derwent Special Prize for Materials, both in 2018, followed by the Drawing Biennial Bursary Award in 2021. In 2023, she undertook a residency at Castello San Basilio in Pisticci, Italy. Wong is also featured in Drawn Out, an exhibition catalogue published by Drawing Room in 2021, alongside artists Kate Lyddon, Alice Maher, Richard Mark Rawlins, and Joel Wyllie, with contributions from Kate Macfarlane, Jacqui McIntosh, Mary Doyle, and Huma Kabakci.