Defying the Laws XXIII

Vault 16

Pooh Bear

2020
Oil, Mylar Paper, Cold Wax on Canvas
18" x 22" x .5"

Export

Accelerated Intimacy, is a 5-channel immersive video installation projected on the acrylic furniture of the hotel room. These spectral objects hint at the semblance of a quotidian space, and the series of moving images projected upon them enact elusive and allusive narratives.

Choo’s cast of solitary figures rehearse a disjointed textual collage of found dialogue, appropriated and spliced from scripts of famous films. The artist has decontextualised these conversations, in turn, reconstructing a potential narrative surrounding each character, who all have been filmed occupying iconic hotel rooms in Singapore. Between the characters and their frames, Choo has carefully constructed uncanny coincidences that are incomplete, open-ended, and methodically ambivalent. In this environment of staged intimacy, the five hotel guests seemingly speak to each other, encountering each other as strangers, yet simultaneously set apart. 

Alongside the video installation, photographic prints and objects that have been used in the films are also on display. This dual presentation of images and objects creates a complex staging of “lived” experiences that exist concurrently across time and space.
 
Rather than offering any kind of resolution to the histories of these characters and the sites they occupy, Accelerated Intimacy is a series of coincidences that are unfinished, culminating and ongoing, revealing further complexities upon each reading. 

Accelerated Intimacy

Defying the Laws XX

Defying the Laws XXI

Defying the Laws XXVI

Defying the Laws XXIV

Defying the Laws XXV

Defying the Laws XII

See You Then

Godspeed

Past Lives

Vault 19

Vault 26

Vault 21

Vault 24

Vault 25

Vault 23

Vault 18

Vault 8

Vault 3

Vault 12

Trauma

and wait

Seul

the (space) in between

X (Music Video, Fever Daze)

being, uninterrupted

(bloody) "flowers falling from my lips"

change changes in blue

i found it in my hands

_quaranteen/ode to los angeles_ was made in January of 2021, my last month spent at home in Los Angeles after nearly a year. I never expected to be in Los Angeles for as long as I was at this point of my life; it wasn’t a part of my plan. However in mid-March 2020, the universe had different plans for me; for everyone. 

  
At first I thought I was going to be in LA for a month, maybe two or three. For sure I would be back in New York by September. However, when all was said and done, I ended up being in LA for 11 months. But I wasn’t just in LA, I was in LA during 2020\. Whether I was protesting, doing Zoom Gaga in my parent’s dining room, or not seeing anyone other than my immediate family for weeks on end because of “the numbers,” I was living my life in a way I never imagined I would at the age of 21\. 

  
2020, however, did do me some good. I got to live with people that I’ve grown extremely close to as friends, I finally started addressing and working on my mental health, I started painting, I began my own mediation and yoga practices, I spent lots of time in nature, and I got the most family time I’ve ever had, something I’ll always be incredibly grateful for it. When I lived at home with my parents, I had the opportunity to regress a little bit mentally, hence the ‘teen’ in _quaranteen_. I re-connected to many icons and pieces of media and art that I connected with as a child, pre-teen and teenager, while at the same time developing and maturing every day simply by nature of being a young adult during 2020\. _quaranteen/ode to los angeles_ acts as a bit of a wrap up, conclusion, or ‘ode,’ if you will, to that period of my life that ended up being so life and mind altering. 

quaranteen/ode to los angeles

_the pendulum of collecting sand & ribbons_ is an experimental contemporary dance group work that centers generally on the theme of the relationship between the feminine experience and time. More specifically, this piece explores themes of ancestral feminine trauma, the ever changing definition/experience of womanhood/femininity through time, and the sapphic experience throughout history and how it relates to the modern sapphic experience. This piece was created at the beginning of 2023 and debuted at the Martha Graham Studio Theater in May 2023 thanks to the Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreographer Grant. The score for the work was created by musical artist Socha.

the pendulum of collecting sand & ribbons

And Now That You're Dead, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?

Demon Tiger/Demon Leopard 

A pair of paintings on Death; the pushing away while it stares at you. A study in my wanting to look at Death more clearly and openly. 

Ode to Death pt. 1 & 2

Flipper Bottoms

Girls Peeing 

Nature Contracted

Jemimas

Divine Pink Woman with Cow Head

Playing Cards 

Tight Game 

Cow Restraining   

Unbelted Nude

This is the final transformation of the Left Hand Path installation series. Originally installed on the ceiling of my gallery in Berlin, using 150 mannequin arms and hands, it spread out from a centre light source, integrated into the ceiling creating an inherit form of shadow, light and structure. I continued to change and transform the piece, ending in this lighting fixture to present at FIABCN this past November, 2022. 

TRANSFORMATIONS PT. 3

Where Eagle Dare... is a homage to traditional tattooing and my love of the classic "Battle Royale" (minus the dragon) tattoo flash. It was a painful process, this painting; full of doubt, indecision and relentless worry. I love it! 

WHERE EAGLES DARE IS AN OBVIOUS TITLE

Dragons closing in... is my first acrylic painting ever. It is a triumph for me; so difficult, yet so incredibly joyful at the same time. 

DRAGONS CLOSING IN ON YOU AND YOUR SOUL

Four Tigers... is a story of traditional art - both in tattooing and in Buddhist history. Bold, colourful, movement and focus, this painting hopefully draws you in and makes you feel excited, or happy, or child-like, or well, whatever you want to feel, really. Enjoy! 

FOUR TIGERS FOUND A BLACK HOLE

Aerial view

aerial view sketches of monochrome pictures i've taken myself

confuses directional patterns in the outer space

2b or not 2b

a self-reflective photo of a being's emotions

she knows

No name 

This floor-based installation won first prize in the Sustainability Art Prize 2021. It consists of large scale line drawings, ceramics, mud and field recordings of soil. The drawings are created through the repetitious addition of a continuous ink line, layer by layer it evokes the slow process of soil accumulation. The ghostly casts allude to the imprint left on the land by industrial agriculture - managed arable land is quieter and exhibits fewer different noises than organically managed land. Just a spoonful explores the relative value we attribute to materials. It is informed by interdisciplinary conversations and fieldwork, motivated by sadness for soil impacted by harvesting sugar beet in East Anglia. Despite all our achievements, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. Over the past 40 years Earth has lost a third of arable land (1) and soil is currently being destroyed 10-times faster than it’s being created (2). The global pandemic has re-focused our attention on the importance of food security, but without soil we wouldn’t have food to eat or fresh water to drink. Just one teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people on the planet but in the UK, "a spoonful of sugar depletes our soils and the NHS budget in the most delightful way" (3). By viewing soil through the lens of artistic practice I hope to raise awareness of the value of soil, to enrich our ways of thinking and our relationship to it.
(1). https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/soil-loss-climate-change-food-security-sheffield-university-1.530115 
(2). https://www.soilassociation.org/media/6263/living-soils-a-call-to-action-2015.pdf 
(3). https://feedbackglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Too-much-of-a-bad-thing-the-use-and-misuse-of-land-and-soils-to-grow-sugar-Feedback-2019.pdf

Just a spoonful, 2021

A series of ceramic vessels poised as apparatuses of quantum listening.  Thinking of sense organs as liminal spaces or crossing points, this work is inspired by the sensation of pulsatile tinnitus. Built by hand their exterior ‘skin’ is left unglazed to suggest the permeability of the body. Recently selected for Fresh 2021 at the British Ceramics BIennial in Stoke-on-Trent.

Objects listening, 2020

Set The Controls

This series of paintings by Sarah Richani centers around how experiences shape who we are. The stories of our lives are created by the power of forming memories. Some memories are life changing events that we always remember. Others may seem trivial, like our daily routines and encounters.
 For the artist, we are the product of all the bits and pieces of grand or minor individual memories and everyday experiences. Her paintings display fragmented pieces of recollections, each telling a different story, as if a diary exploded on the canvas. A snapshot of floating memories, old ones that appear interlaced in a flowing process of time and space, and vibrant new ones that are just being formed. 
There is a constant change, things shifting, rusting, pain and joy, threads with loose ends, reconstructing, sense of being, stitching and patching our scars, recreating, making sense of who we are. At the end, we are our memories. And once we understand that; we could be creating the memories that we desire through our everyday experiences. 
Her paintings are layers of oil paint, charcoal, collage, paste and eroded metal solutions on jute canvas. Time and change are depicted by patches of accelerated and uncontrolled metal solution erosion. She uses symbolism and materials transform to carry new meanings. The threads, for example, represent tally marks but also signify healing old scars and putting our lives together. Some of the collages are previous artworks of hers, “mise en abyme”, a painting within a painting, a story within the bigger story. A multi layered process comes all together to reveal the journey of us evolving, understanding who we are and finding our purpose.


Fragments of memories

All I see is rust

In the soil 

Horizon 

Glimpse into the past

A parallel to previous methods of compositing images, Choo manipulates and reconfigures elusive moments between consciousness, document and space.

Formerly a plantation land in Singapore, the area of Emerald Hill was subdivided for wealthy th
Chinese and Straits-Chinese merchants at the turn of the 20​ Century for their place of abode. A space where families were seen to interact frequently with one another, dwellings were built as terrace houses of a variety of architectural styles ranging from Transitional, Late to Art-Deco; with most independent mansions having been demolished today. Now a conservation site, Emerald Hill houses new businesses ranging from restaurants, bars to small firms.

Towards the end of a stretch of shophouses, ​156 Emerald Hill stands and remains as a residential block housing various individuals. This artwork presents a digital composite of documented moments, recorded during the Circuit Break in Singapore as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. ​Hovering on the border between objective and subjective, public and private; the image presented is a culmination of momentary openings, pockets in between. A transitory site, ​156 Emerald Hill sets the stage in depicting ignored seams and forgotten vistas, promising a site from which either/or of utopian and apocalyptic.

156 Emerald Hill

playground 
noun | play·ground | \ ˈplā-ˌgrau̇nd  

1: a piece of land used for and usually equipped with facilities for recreation especially by children

2: an area known or suited for activity of a specified sort

 
Tonight, the air is warm is an investigation of one’s perception and behaviour in relation to the playground as a social space.

Individuals are invited to respond to a series of instructional procedures designed for them.  The essential nature of the activity is imprecise and occurs across space and time. A perpetually open project, the piece takes place in the inter-spaces between interpretation and negotiation, performance and chance.

Tonight, the air is warm

Zoom, click, waltz is a multimedia installation comprising 13 LED screens depicting individuals in various states of “performance”, while isolated within separate window frames. What began as an attempt to communicate with neighbours during Circuit Break, developed into an imagined possibility of individuals connecting through dance. 

Over a period of 2 months, residents received mailed instruction requests to perform at an interval spanning 30 minutes. These recordings were at times effective, others, futile. Various subjects’ responses range from active to passive; with individuals participating in modes of conscious performance, and others nonchalant, in contemplation. 

Juxtaposed and interspersed alongside staged, found and borrowed media, separate footages are stitched together to form an uncanny, seamless reality situated in the inter-spaces between interpretation and negotiation, truth and fiction, performativity and chance.

Zoom, Click, Waltz

For the Elle series, we explore her honest and natural beauty with deliberate provocation that challenges societal prejudices.

Capturing Elle Brittain was an exploration to occupy authentic emotions in her portrait. With a raw honesty, distance, and sunset lighting, these were all pivotal elements that showcase her depth of her character. This portrait is enamoured by her natural beauty and true self.

Original photograph printed on Canson Rag Photographique 310gsm archival cotton paper.
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, gold ink, gold leaf.
Ornate frame (part of the artwork).
Aluminium backing.

Elle in Bloom

For the Samuel series, we explore stereotypes of his heritage and challenge the conforms of masculine norms by bringing them out of the shadows and into the light.

Samuel Barrie's roots belong to Sierra Leone, West Africa. Moving to Australia at the age of four, he has never lost clarity of his identity. A strong and confident individual, we explored his structural expressions and movements in this portrait. The absorbing orange background enhances the intricacies of Samuel's figure and features, while the green light soaks into the highlights of his skin. I used jewellery to embody my unprejudiced approach to photographing the conforms of masculine norms. It's an image designed to remodel the world, and people's opinions, by challenging societal prejudices about men.

Original photograph printed on Canson Rag Photographique 310gsm archival cotton paper.
Oil, spray paint, silver leaf.
Aluminium backing.

Samuel Back

For the Samuel series, we explore stereotypes of his heritage and challenge the conforms of masculine norms by bringing them out of the shadows and into the light.

Samuel Barrie's roots belong to Sierra Leone, West Africa. Moving to Australia at the age of four, he has never lost clarity of his identity. A strong and confident individual, we explored his structural expressions and movements in this portrait. The absorbing orange background enhances the intricacies of Samuel's figure and features, while the green light soaks into the highlights of his skin. I used jewellery to embody my unprejudiced approach to photographing the conforms of masculine norms. It's an image designed to remodel the world, and people's opinions, by challenging societal prejudices about men.

Original photograph printed on Canson Rag Photographique 310gsm archival cotton paper.
Oil, spray paint, gold leaf.
Aluminium backing.

Samuel Profile

2020
Oil, Mylar Paper, Tape on Canvas
36" x 24" x 2"



The Accepted Failure

2020
Oil, Mylar Paper, Tape on Canvas
25.5" x 29" x .1"

Installed onto wall with nails, staples, and/or tape.

Import

2020
Oil, Mylar Paper, Tape on Canvas
36" x 24" x 2"

Digging

2020
Oil, Mylar Paper, Tape on Canvas
98" x 72" x .1"

Suffix

2020
Oil, Painting Butter, Mylar Paper, Tape on Canvas

Ingrained

Oil, mylar paper, tape on canvas
73.5" x 59.5" x .1"
2020


Golden Blanket

Ceramics, latex, wire thread, black floor level panel
30 x 50 x100 cm
Ceramic vessels caught in tightly stretched skin-like latex, dig deep into our ambiguous feelings towards the flesh. Ceramics and skin both function as containers or carriers of matter and meaning.
The taught skin-like latex represents the feeling of being physically and psychologically stretched between priorities as a studying and working mother.  Already a fully-fledged member of the ‘sandwich generation’ caring for both children and elderly parents; Covid-19 lockdown, as for many women, intensified the tension between the different forms of labour.
Transitioning between roles and realities - seemingly coherent worlds or spaces of objects and beings - I come to question the definitions of these worlds when experienced within a confined space.  In lock-down, I grieve for time spent in the interstitial – or in between – moments. Reflecting on this, the work explores the liminal state between body and object, between corporeal and non-corporeal. The notion of the skin as both a materiality and the site of relationality make it possible to describe bodies more generally outside the human and its hierarchies of difference.



Liminal vessels, 2020

An ongoing social art project this sculpture brings together a collection of found objects in acrylic boxes, exchanged by post with children and their families around the world. The contents of the boxes record a generation’s diverse personal experiences of air quality in their local environment, displayed in an indexical cabinet.
There’s a murky relationship between air pollution and coronavirus, which may mean that tackling air pollution will be a crucial part of easing lockdown. In the context of ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, I’m interested in how the next generation’s childhood experience of their environment during the pandemic might affect their ecological thinking and awareness.

Artwork details:
Title: The air we breathe  |  Artist name: Sarah Strachan  |  Media: Sculpture - Wooden cabinet, clear acrylic boxes, found objects  |  Size: W42.5 x H105 x L84cm.  |  Year: 2019 


The air we breathe, 2019

The sketch is all about one of  the temple, located in hampi(Karnataka, India).
The yellow colour in the background emphasis the structure and enhances the beauty of our culture .

Heritage of HUMPI

Performativity of Things  2017/18

A Series of transparent silicone clothing moulds

Model: Esra Vianne Graul
Photos: Conny Kirste

Performativity of Things

The Series 'Sculpture dresses‘  was showcased at Fashionclash Festival in Maastricht 2019.
The dresses are handmade and each piece is individual. 
The pieces will be exhibited in the  "Arp Museum Rolandseck"  in 2020/21


No. 1 “pleated turtle neck dress“, 2019, silicone; textiles , 133 x 65 x 20 cm
No. 2 „Trench coat dress“, 2019, silicone; textiles, 131 x 50 x 13 cm
No.3 „Blazer on shoulders dress“, 2019, silicone; textiles , 95 x 60 x 13 cm
No. 4 „Pencil skirt dress“, 2019, silicone; textiles , 133 x 52 x 12 cm,
No. 5 „Bathrobe“, 2019, silicone; textiles, 132 x 52 x 17 cm


Photos by Team Pasarella Photography

'Tableau Vivant'

When our freedom to connect to others is inhibited, people realize how important human interaction is to our physical and mental wellbeing. The two images work together as one, demonstrating two scenarios a city can face when turned upside down. Standing alone, it will develop into a scene from hell, but when reconnected to itself on a higher level, a beautifully rich, multidimensional scene with depth and emotion can develop

Two States of a City

When was the last time you thought of how many noises your ears picked up without you even registering it? Or how many things your eyes saw today? Or how many times you used your mouth to eat, speak, smile or kiss somebody? And best of all, have you ever thought about the amount of work you give your hands per day? How many objects they have touched or picked up. How many times they were used to express your excitement, your anger, your happiness?

New Angles

What do you do when it's mid-winter and you want to go to the beach? 
You get dressed up and go. It's as simple as that! 


Summer Snow

These are portraits of my friends through my eyes. 

How We Project Ourselves

Leuven Leeft - Leuven lives
 
I wanted to illustrate my hometown Leuven. This medieval city hasn't lost any of its charms since the second world war. Every year, students from all over the world come to Leuven to study -and to aquire a better understanding in the beer drinking 'art'.
Leuven has hundreds of pubs, restaurants and stores. Every corner of every street is crowded with bikes as each student owns
-at least- one. Don't forget to check out our beautiful city hall but beware of our mayor, he's a bulldog!

Leuven Leeft

The evolution of La puerta del sol
 
I wanted to show the evolution in time of La puerta del sol (Bolivia) in an educational yet fun way. I based this project on the illustrations of Where's Wally.
 
 
November 3, 2015
 

The Evolution of la puerta del Sol


Nepal - La BD se mobilise
 
Le 25 avril 2015 à 11h56 locale, un tremblement de terre de magnitude 7,8 a plongé le Népal dans la mort et la désolation.Face à cette catastrophe, la BD se mobilise!La totalité des bénéfices de cet album seront verses à la Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge, au profit des sinistrés népalais.
 
 
Editions Place du Sablon
April 25, 2015

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Sarah

Defying the Laws XXIII

Vault 16

Pooh Bear

Export

Accelerated Intimacy

Defying the Laws XX

Defying the Laws XXI

Defying the Laws XXVI

Defying the Laws XXIV

Defying the Laws XXV

Defying the Laws XII

See You Then

Godspeed

Past Lives

Vault 19

Vault 26

Vault 21

Vault 24

Vault 25

Vault 23

Vault 18

Vault 8

Vault 3

Vault 12

Trauma

and wait

Seul

the (space) in between

X (Music Video, Fever Daze)

being, uninterrupted

(bloody) "flowers falling from my lips"

change changes in blue

i found it in my hands

quaranteen/ode to los angeles

the pendulum of collecting sand & ribbons

And Now That You're Dead, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?

Demon Tiger/Demon Leopard

Ode to Death pt. 1 & 2

Flipper Bottoms

Girls Peeing

Nature Contracted

Jemimas

Divine Pink Woman with Cow Head

Playing Cards

Tight Game

Cow Restraining

Unbelted Nude

TRANSFORMATIONS PT. 3

WHERE EAGLES DARE IS AN OBVIOUS TITLE

DRAGONS CLOSING IN ON YOU AND YOUR SOUL

FOUR TIGERS FOUND A BLACK HOLE

Aerial view

Aerial view

2b or not 2b

she knows

No name

Just a spoonful, 2021

Objects listening, 2020

Set The Controls

Fragments of memories

All I see is rust

In the soil

Horizon

Glimpse into the past

156 Emerald Hill

Tonight, the air is warm

Zoom, Click, Waltz

Elle in Bloom

Samuel Back

Samuel Profile

The Accepted Failure

Import

Digging

Suffix

Ingrained

Golden Blanket

Liminal vessels, 2020

The air we breathe, 2019