Sara Zielinski
As a person who has spent much of her life uncomfortable, I recognize that my latest work reveals an obsession with comfort and discomfort. The work is about relationships; it is about home and domesticity; it is about the experience of being female; and it is about pain.
Reflecting on this work I see the near constant discomfort I’ve felt in my life – with men, sexuality, physical injury, and psychosomatic pain – and I see a tremendous effort to create comfort. I seek to transform hard spaces into soft, inviting ones. I print faces on walls to create ever-present companions. In a room surrounded by my characters, I am not alone, nor is anyone else who enters the space. I find comfort here, comfort in not being alone and comfort in my ability to create. This is my power. Creating – printing, drawing, painting, building, sewing – is how I convert pain into peace.
The most complete realizations of this to date are Only in Heaven and This Doll’s House, two immersive print-based installations. Consuming an entire apartment, Only in Heaven gave visitors the experience of entering one of my black and white drawings. This Doll’s House, at INK Miami Art Fair 2017, simultaneously addressed childhood and womanhood. The space was filled with toys, images of sex, and implications of objectification and everything was for sale.
My work is conceptual and handmade; it is about communicating ideas while never letting viewers forget the hand behind the mind. The naïve quality of my line creates a sense of playfulness and humor, even when the subject matter becomes painful.
For more information about Sara Zielinski, please visit her website.
