Sara Tantawy

Lives and works in Seaside Heights, NJ

Artist statement

Artist Statement Can identity ever truly be erased? I approach the body as a site of memory—a place where personal experience intersects with what we inherit and what reaches us from the past, sometimes without our knowing where it comes from. What draws me to the body is not only its physical presence, but its capacity to hold what language cannot fully express: a feeling, a gesture, a ritual, or a trace that may remain within us long after its beginning has been forgotten. My inquiry began with movement and dance, and with the body’s ability to express emotions that do not always find their way into words. This led me to the study of movement and dance in ancient Egypt, where I began to understand gesture as something that can carry meaning beyond the moment of its appearance—an imprint capable of crossing time and remaining within a practice even after its origin has been forgotten. From there, my inquiry expanded into memory and identity, particularly Arab identity and attempts to erase and fragment it. I am interested in what happens when the forms through which we recognize ourselves change, or when our connection to the places, symbols, and practices that have carried our memory is disrupted. What remains when the form disappears? And does its disappearance mean that what it carried has disappeared as well? In my work, the body appears still and powerful within spaces marked by rupture and change. I do not understand fragmentation as an injury to the body, but as a...

Artwork