Mary Ellen Carroll’s (MEC, studios) prolific career as a conceptual artist spans more than three decades  and occupies the disciplines of architecture/design and public policy, writing, performance and film. The foundation of the work is the investigation of a single, fundamental question: what do we consider a work of art? Carroll frequently works with unsuspecting materials that range from public policy and land use to unused television frequencies as a form of 21st century land art, albeit the valuable and non-visible real estate of radio frequency.

Carroll is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including the 201  IASPIS Fellowship in Sweden, the Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin for 2016, a Graham Foundation Fellowship for prototype 180 and the AIA’s Artist of the Year Award. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pollack/Krasner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at numerous American and international galleries, including the Whitney Museum-New York, Generali Foundation-Vienna,Austria, Jacobs Museum-Zurich, Switzerland, ICA Philadelphia, the Renaissance Society-Chicago, ICA-London, Museum für Völkerkunde-Munich, MOMUK-Vienna. Her work belongs to in numerous public and private collections. 

Teaching, lecturing and public presentations are an important part of Carroll’s work and educational institutions have included architecture and public policy programs at Rice University in Houston, Columbia University in New York, University of California at Irvine, Pusan National University, Busan, South Korea,  amongst others. Cultural institutions have included: The DIA Art Foundation-New York, MOMA-New York, Museum of Fine Arts-Houston, Alserkal Avenue-Dubai, Busan Museum of Modern Art-South Korea and many others.

Carroll’s ongoing opus prototype 180 is in its 3rd phase and is a conceptual work of art and urban alteration that entails a radical form of renovation through the physical revolution and reoccupation of a single family house in the aging, first ring subdivision of Sharpstown in Houston, Texas. In conception and planning for two decades, the project is temporally, physically, and structurally organized around its catalytic rotational transformation. While the rotation and relocation of the house on its lot interrupt the relation of the house to its context and to existing street typologies they also signal the altered life of the house as a space devoted to a program that will address the issue of aging neighborhoods and their potential futures. prototype 180 strategically intersects conceptual art projects, social activism, urban legislation and economic processes. Its 180 degree revolution registers aesthetically against a history of critical house alterations and administratively in relation to Houston’s unregulated land use policies and its absence of zoning. It has been exhibited at Columbia University’s GSAPP, Galerie Stadtpark, Krems, Austria and the Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria. (www.prototype180.org)

 A monograph of her work published by SteidlMACK (London and Gottingen) received the AIGA’s 2010 Book of the Year Award. Carroll was commissioned to realize Open Outcry and Ground Control that were included in the exhibition FEAST at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and the Blaffer Museum at the University of Houston. She realized, No. 18 an architectural insertion and rooftop gardens as a commission for the Busan Biennial in Korea that was directed by Roger Buergel who was the artistic director for Documenta 12 that is still ongoing. Her work was included in the American Pavilion for the Venice Biennale for 2014 for Architecture. Public Utility 2.0 (www.publicutility2.com) originated as a commission for the triennial Prospect.3 New Orleans under the artistic direction of the Perez Art Museum's Director, Franklin Sirmans. It architects unused television frequencies as a material to build equitable and just access for the underserved and forthcoming deployments are in development with Denniston Hill and prototype 180. Carroll's ongoing work on immigration and asylum and the recent collaboration with the artist Lucas Michael for DYKWTCA.com resulted in direction action on the children being detained by the US government at the Mexican border to raise awareness and funding to support the organizations that provide medical, mental health and legal support to the children and their families. 

Mary Ellen Carroll participated in REMAKING fiction/nonfiction and was in conversation with Michelle Ellsworth and Kirsten Johnson. Listen to the conversation here.