Anthony Caruso

About the Artist

Anthony Caruso is a US–based photographic and performance artist whose work examines visibility, vulnerability, gender presentation, and the social regulation of bodies. Working through self-directed photography, site-responsive actions, and durational performance, he uses his own body to test how clothing, context, and public behavior shape what viewers consider ordinary, acceptable, or out of place.

His ongoing series Incongruous developed through repeated public actions in Montréal and other urban environments. In 2026, Observed was selected for Wild, Weird and Wonderful, a juried digital group exhibition at Not ShockBoxx Gallery. His current performance projects extend these concerns into audience judgment, institutional classification, and sustained encounter.

Anthony Caruso

Photographic and performance artist

Artist Statement

My work begins when a body appears to be in the wrong place or presented in the wrong way.

I deliberately construct a figure that is difficult to reconcile: a male-presenting body, exposed and composed, often revealing feminine details and behaving as though it belongs within an environment that suggests otherwise. I want viewers to notice not only the figure, but the speed and certainty of their own interpretation. What makes the presentation seem vulnerable, ridiculous, sexual, inappropriate, or unsettling? Which qualities belong to the body, and which have been projected onto it?

In my photographic work, I place my body within ordinary public environments and allow architecture, chance encounters, and the presence of other people to complete the image. In performance, looking becomes a form of agency. Viewers may be asked to inspect, classify, direct, document, or otherwise determine the body’s status. Their decisions expose the social rules operating beneath apparently personal reactions.

Social discomfort is not something I try to resolve or reassure away; it is part of the material. The exposed body accepts the consequences of the situation it has deliberately entered, while the viewer is asked to account for the judgment they bring to it. Rather than offering a stable explanation of the figure, the work asks why this presentation seems to require one at all.

”Special thanks to my patron who has encouraged my growth”

- Anthony Caruso