Sarah Rose Guitian Nederlof

An Unforeseen Encounter

With this project, I attempt to create unusual ways in which the viewer experiences the plastic bag. The performative dialogue between my body and the plastic bag result in visually serene body-improvisations, an ode to revalue their mundane significance.

For a while I have been collecting ordinary objects (e.g. plastic bags from local markets, coloured fruit nets and cardboards, napkins, etc); for their function and not so much for their appearance. During the various lockdowns, the need arose to investigate the relationship between these objects and my body.
For this project I lay my focus on the plastic bag, collected from local markets, in which no logo is visible. I am attracted by their features (colour, materiality, shape and sound) as well as by their unpredictable moves led by the wind. For example, when two plastic bags fly loosely, how the get tangled yet find a way to get loose again.

''This series of sculptures arranged like a museum display or an archaeological excavation, are elements of contemporary daily life, destined, like so many others, to disappear. Sarah Rose is an artist who often uses photography in her work, since this medium allows her to observe and capture details that usually go unnoticed. She now experiments with other means, but her attention continues to be on the little or the overlooked things. Not only does she try to capture time through these elements, but her process also involves a recognition of their forms and a dedication that pays homage to the invisible, emphasizing its aesthetic value and establishing non-hierarchical relationships with the objects that coexist along us.''

During the pandemic I developed a fascination for tangerine peels. Every time I encountered a new peel trace in public space, I would stop to wonder what kind of person was behind the peel trace. Paying attention for example to the way it was peeled or where it was placed. In my studio I started to imitate the different peel shapes with plaster on gauze. Alongside, mixing red and yellow acrylic paint, I would try to get the right orange.