The Manifest of Remembrance, 2021-2023
The spatial, site-specific installation The Manifest of Remembrance consists of a series of sculptures exhibited as an archaeological excavation. The sculptures are plaster prints of objects destined to disappear from modern everyday life, such as a plastic bottle. Typical of the public space of Blanca were the repeated arrangements of clusters of plastic bottles, stripping them of their initial function. Why and by whom were they abandoned, and what can the bottles tell us about Spanish culture?
Sarah draws attention with the curiosity and thoroughness of an anthropologist in The Manifest of Remembrance to unnoticed details of a (village) culture in danger of disappearing. At the same time, she explores how the meaning of objects shifts by placing them in a new context, in this case a three-by-two-metre rectangle made of local sand clay she collected herself. By choosing this way of positioning the sculptural works, Sarah questions the role of found objects and the human relationship to the living environment.
The Manifest of Remembrance is not only an attempt to preserve the present, but also a dedicated way of paying homage to the invisible, emphasising the aesthetic value of forms and establishing non-hierarchical relationships with the objects that coexist with humans. She is therefore deeply interested in the behaviours, norms and rituals of which objects are a part, or material culture: '(...) the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people.' Previously, personal, unpleasant experiences caused the artist to avoid making eye contact, which led to encounters with inanimate objects where her gaze fell. She recognised a sense of invisibility, of going inconspicuous in the search for 'proof' of her being allowed to belong in the Netherlands. Sarah considers the question of where inanimate elements find their origin and what preceded the useless utilitarian object left behind in public space.
Site-specific window installation @ NEstudios
Site-specific installation @ AADK Spain
