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= Carole Frances-Lung = Carole Frances-Lung (born in 1966, in San Francisco, California) is an activist and an artist. She is known for her performances through her alter ego Frau Fiber, which she uses as a way to advocate for workers in the garment industry. Via Frau Fiber she uses a hybrid of playful activism, cultural criticism, research, and crafting of one-of-a-kind garment production performances. She founded Sewing Rebellion (2006, Chicago, Illinois),  a workshop that teaches people to sew their own clothes and how to recycle their clothing to avoid waste. Her works make statements about the garment industry are influenced by labor history, environmental impact, and feminist themes.

Life and Education
Carole Frances-Lung was born in 1966, in San Francisco, California. She grew up in Huntington Beach, California and as she was growing up, her grandmother taught her how to sew her own clothing.

Lung received a Bachelor of Science degree in Textiles and Clothing from North Dakota State University in 1988. She later on studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2007.

In the story Lung constructed, Frau Fiber, Lung’s alter ego was born on September 13, 1966, in Apoloda, Germany. Fiber worked in garment and knitting factories in Germany until the Berlin Wall came down and she lost her job to Chinese workers. She later met Lung in 2006 at the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Germany while Lung was there for a semester of studying abroad.

Work
In the 1990s, Lung worked in the garment industry and saw the questionable practices of the industry along with the negative effects of globalization on the workers. In 2006 after a semester in Germany, she created her alter ego Frau Fiber after being inspired by the history of socialism and women fighting for social justice. In the fall of that year, Lung opened her Sewing Rebellion workshop project to everyone through her alter ego, where she and her army of “Faux Fraus” teach people pattern making, sewing, and ideas on recycling and reusing their clothing.

In 2009, she became a professor in the Department of Art at California State University, Los Angeles where she still teaches today.

In 2013 Lung opened the Institute 4 Labor Generosity Workers & Uniforms (or ILGWU, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union) in Long Beach's East Village Arts District. ILGWU works to raise awareness of global labor issues through performative and participatory projects. Sewing Rebellion workshops are also held here as an additional educational avenue for ILGWU.

In the 2020 lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lung through Frau Fiber started “Solitary at a Distance”, where she created over 300 masks. She then donated these masks to homeless shelters and taught people how to sew a mask through a video.

Lung is the biographer and archivist of Frau Fiber while Fiber is the front person of the work they do together. Her performances serve as a commentary on the garment industry and its exploitative practices against the workers. She investigates the human cost of the globalization of the garment industry and the mass production of apparel. Through Frau Fiber’s performances, she addresses themes of labor, value, and time of the garments she produces and deconstructs by hand.

Exhibits and Performances
2008: KO Enterprises: Labor Behind the Label, Chicago, Illinois

2015: KO (Knock Off) Enterprises: Roadmap to a Living Wage, Craft in America, Los Angeles, California

2015: Factory to Factory: Cut and Sew, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

2015: The Peoples Cloth Trade Show: Center for Craft, Asheville, North Carolina

2016: T-shirt is the Problem, Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, Vermont

2018: Frau Fiber Vs. the Machines, San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum, San Jose, California

2019: Frau Fiber’s Mission in America, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, California

2019: “Solidarity at a Distance”, Long Beach, California