Sara Bjarland

Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Artist statement

In my work I use discarded materials and objects to materially think through and reflect on my experience of the world and issues like overconsumption, the relationship between nature and culture, labour and care. For my sculptures, installations, photographs and textile works, I collect broken, dirty or half decayed objects I find in my urban surroundings, along the roadside or at recycling facilities; I see these as remnants of our consumer society and as carriers of meaning. I’m also interested in the concept of liminality, and how objects which are dirty or decaying can be unsettling or uncanny because they linger in between the recognisable and the unknown, between the dirty and the clean, between having had a function and being useless, or between the living and the non-living. By including these unwanted, ‘worthless’ materials and objects in my work, I question the hierarchy and value of materials. The element of care is also important, as my work is a way of caring for materials that would otherwise be destroyed.

Artwork