Clarisse Casalino is a Chicago-based registered psychiatric nurse, writer, educator, and multidisciplinary artist. She graduated from New York University in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a minor in Studio Art. Working across collage and written narrative, her practice explores the intersections of medicine, memory, and care. Drawing from experiences on both sides of the healthcare system, her work examines the complexities of human vulnerability and the stories we construct to make sense of suffering, connection, and survival.

Rather than offering answers, Ms. Casalino's work invites viewers to sit with ambiguity. She is interested in the tension between how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others, particularly within institutions that seek to define us. Fragments of medical ephemera, found imagery, and personal narrative become a means of questioning assumptions about illness, resilience, and what it means to heal.

Her work implies intimacies gone awry, longing, and often an intense misreading of the human experience. There is an underlying interest in healing. The pieces foreshadow an uneasy truth that each of us confronts at some juncture in our lives: that self-inflicted pain may be the most lethal malady of all. Whether through visual art, writing, or education, Ms. Casalino's practice is ultimately an attempt to make visible the fragile humanity that exists beneath the labels we assign ourselves and one another.

That's enough third-person writing for both of us.

Welcome.