Sarah Stefana Smith

The series Symmetries/Asymmetries (2020) reflects on light, shadow, line, and blur. Using blur to disrupt the focal point and the networks of line, the photographs attempt to toe the line between symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships. The series expands through time, with new edition works offered bi-annually.

Blessing of Liberty and an Expulsion Therof

2019

bird and deer netting, fishing line, aluminum siding, two-screen projection.

Arlington Art Center, Arlington VA

I uses barrier materials—deer, bird, and safety netting, chicken wire and fishing line—to comment on lines of demarcation around difference and the way modes of difference are used to constitute and solidify belonging. Utilizing materials designed for containment, separation, and protection, BLANK work mines the physical qualities of these materials, deconstructing, mending, and manipulating them. In her mixed media installations, the artist utilizes multiple modalities, replicating and extending these abstract forms through projection and shadow. Transformed into a unified whole though processes of mending and deconstruction, materials associated with separation, restriction, and categorization are moved to the center, questioning the nature of boundaries and containment. In the ongoing project A | Mend, the artist draws on the etymological difference between amend, mend, emend, and amendment, considering their overlapping meanings and the possibility of altering something in order to make it right or just. 

2018

The Shape of Memory

Borland Project Space, State College, PA

photography, deer and bird netting, fishing line

The works in the Shape of Memory reflect most recent exploration of barrier materials to think about the terms of right and just terrain.

Other Inclinations

2017

bird/deer netting, fishing line, projection

Description: TBD

This series of images reflects on trace and residual embodiments that articulate themselves through abstract sculptural forms. I am interested in thinking of form and the photograph of the form, as matter, that collectively signify knowable objects/subjects/embodiment and simultaneously require scrutiny to make sense of what is possible. Pigeon mesh—a material literally used to keep pigeons from nesting on patios—gives itself to the nature and shape of organic embodiment and resistance to such embodiment. I draw on the use of negative and positive space, depicted through black sculptural forms against white walls, to form a stark contrast.