Carol Sawyer (she/her) is a visual artist and singer working with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990’s her visual art work has investigated the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. Her ongoing and expansive project, the Natalie Brettschneider Archive, was recently exhibited at the Calgary Contemporary in Calgary Alberta. A book about this project, titled Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive, was published in 2020 by the Carleton University Art Gallery, in conjunction with the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and the Koffler Art Gallery in Toronto. In 2017 The Canada Council awarded Sawyer the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. In 2021, she was nominated for the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award.
Sawyer earned an Honours diploma in photography from ECUAD, and a Masters in interdisciplinary arts from SFU, where she studied acting, music performance, critical theory, and music composition. She studied classical singing, focusing on opera and art song, before training in extended voice with Richard Armstrong. She has performed extensively in improvised music contexts, and incorporates her singing voice into her artworks in performances and videos. She has released three CDs with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo, and collaborated and recorded with American composer and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich. A Natalie Brett Quartet LP was launched with concerts in December 2022, at 8 east in Vancouver, and in January 2023 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.