Carol Civre crafts office baddies and tramp stamped grandmas as an ode to alternative beauty

Interview taken from SYKY Magazine: Issue 03

Carol Civre – aka Carol The Kitty – makes bright, shiny, exaggerated pieces that hit every pleasure center in the brain. Life-size Polly Pockets, fish slippers, corporate baddies, grandmas flashing Y2K-style tramp stamps – her camp, maximalist work is layered with nods to classical art, internet lore, fashion, food, and more. Civre's clever, stylized characters are often a comment on stereotypes, conjured out of: “fragments from different parts of my life. Things I see around me, things that are part of my personal experience, things I love, even things I hate.”

Today, we're speaking with the Milan-born, NYC-based 3D designer for SYKY Magazine: Issue 03, which explores themes of digital identity. Over email, Civre, who has worked with names like Roblox, ELF, Zara Larsson, and Madonna, and featured in publications including King Kong, Vogue, POLYESTER ZINE, and PAPER, describes a childhood surrounded by art and an obsession with The Sims. “My parents have a lot of painted nudes, Botero or Botero-inspired artwork, so I grew up around a variety of bodies represented in different mediums. Go figure.”

With character creation there since day one, it’s no surprise that Civre’s work explores self-image and digital personas. Her creations question norms while celebrating the absurd, the nostalgic, and the hyper-stylized. We caught up with the self-taught designer to talk alternative beauty, why we want to see ourselves reflected in digital, being a retired Simmer, and more.

This issue of SYKY Magazine reflects on how digital allows us to reimagine who our muses are. Do you have a muse? 

I don’t have just one muse. Every character I make amalgamates one or more personalities that I use as building blocks. I know there's a stylistic thread throughout my character design, but, to me, they're all different and unique personalities. Sometimes it's not even a person that prompts me to create a character, but an object or a garment. I try to exaggerate whatever base I'm working with and turn it into a caricature of the vision I started with. That’s the Carol the kitty effect, carolization :p.

Your work is so layered with references to the internet and popular culture. Why is it important to you to bring that through in your work?

The most important digital reference for me will always be The Sims. I'm a retired Simmer because I don't have time to enter world-building wormholes right now. But I hope to return to it because it was my first love when it comes to anything digital. And online dress-up games like the ones MyScene made (iykyk). I always tell people my job is a Sims game on hard mode with no cheat codes.

In a way, my work is undeniably linked to internet culture because that’s where it started. It’s strange to say this now, because the app is so different, but my career began on Instagram. I was sharing work that was so bad, but people saw the vision.

You create incredible digital characters that play with stereotypes and online aesthetics trends – from your office baddies to the older avatars you created for SYKY.  What is it about character creation that you’re drawn to, and what story are you telling? 

I’m passionate about character creation because making digital reflections of humans is much more powerful than it might seem; it mirrors our ideals of humanity, and what it reflects isn't always pretty. 

I'm not a very narratively inclined person, so I focus on visual details to tell a story. Character creation is a natural way for me to present narratives visually. I've always been this way. I was a big Simmer as a kid (had to stop, too addicting), but I couldn’t have cared less about the "life" part. I would spend hours creating the characters, which I would inevitably light on fire or drown in a pool by taking away the ladder (lol). 

I want my characters to be a window into inner worlds and an ode to different ways of experiencing beauty. I don’t like to overcomplicate or intellectualize artwork, so I’m happy if my work invokes any feeling of curiosity, good or bad. I've been to so many art shows where I've read paragraphs on the walls that I'll never remember, but I do remember the few shows that made me feel something through visual intrigue. 

Why do digital characters make such a powerful statement about human identity?

I think they're one way we anthropomorphize technology to better understand or see ourselves in it. Assigning human elements to non-human entities is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Like Greek and Roman myths that used gods/goddesses to anthropomorphize anything from the ocean to the concept of war, or like... Jesus? I'm not a Christian, but isn't he the ultimate anthropomorphic figure representing a higher power? Making things in our image is a method humans have always used to understand forces we don't fully grasp, and technology is no different. Whether it's humanoid robots, AI voice assistants, or avatars, we want to see human identity reflected in the technology we're creating. 

Do you see your characters as a place for personal self-expression?

Definitely. A lot of what I don't express regularly through my personal style gets reflected in my characters. It's funny, sometimes people meet me and I get a feeling they expect me to look different or dress differently based on my work. There are times you'll catch me in a Renaissance ball gown, or Count Orlock drag, or clown makeup, but most of the time I'm wearing a black tank top and look pretty normal. 

Can we talk about the older avatars? What made you want to create them? 

I wanted to create a fashion story with older 3D characters, because you see them so rarely in this industry. There are deep-rooted issues in digital representation – avatars in video games have played into the sexualization and idealization of young female bodies since video games first existed; personal voice assistants, like Siri or Alexa, have been traditionally portrayed as subservient female characters. The lack of representation in digital identities stems from a lack of representation in the people creating them.

Do you think that’s changing?

The focus is shifting, and I'm glad to see more diversity among digital creators, many of whom understand these issues and take on the responsibility of representing humans in digital spaces.

But these characteristics have been entrenched in digital culture, so it's not surprising that they continue to be the primary types of avatars we are seeing. Some artists perpetuate these stereotypes in their characters as a commentary on this issue, and others create characters without even considering the impact that their appearance could have. 

What do you want people to take from your work?

Less of a concept and more of a feeling. I love character design because people can relate to it personally. I want it to feel like you are meeting a new, very exaggerated, caricatured person when you interact with my characters.

What do you have coming up next?

I'm continuing client work (I <3 my clients). I have a collaboration coming out next month with a long-term client who's collaborating with a brand that 12 y/o me and 29 y/o me would be equally obsessed with, so it’s fun to be a part of. I also just signed with an agency, so I should have help with my work, which has been a long time coming.

Collect SYKY Magazine: Issue 03 before April 7. Creatively directed by SYKY's artistic director Nicola Formichetti, this month's digital cover is by 3D artist and fashion designer Gabrielle Rosenstein. Keystone Holders get a free mint.