Visiting Artist Talk: SaraNoa Mark

Artist Statement:

My practice examines traces left by time, in landscapes and in collective memory. I work with enduring materials to explore permanence and erasure, and employ subtractive gestures to archive the presence of absence.

In my sculptures, time is counted slowly, through repeated gestures. These marks accumulate in works that form a physical accounting, providing an alternative means of measuring temporality outside the system of commodified time.

Drawing is at the core of my practice, I view the earth as a drawing, continuously drafted by environmental and human gestures. I seek to enter into dialogue with other carved languages from canyons to cuneiform tablets to sidewalk graffiti – that document an eternal impulse to score stories into place. My aim is to entirely transform my materials by stringently reworking that which already exists, reshaping what is present.

My works are situated in observation and rooted in fieldwork. Intrinsic to my process is the conviction that authentic work is achieved through sustained interaction.

The questions driving my work interrogate personal and cultural investments in turning to materiality as a means of transmitting memory. I interrogate this impossible instinct to preserve and retain intangible experience by transferring onto objects the task of surviving time. Making art is my method of becoming a witness.

Artist Bio:

SaraNoa Mark (b. NY, NY) pursues a drawing practice that investigates traces left by time, as they exist in landscapes and in collective memory. SaraNoa’s work has been supported by a Fulbright research fellowship in Turkey. SaraNoa has received grants from Artadia, the Harpo Foundation, U.S. Embassy Mission Grants Program in Turkey, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, John Anson Kittredge Fund, Illinois Arts Council, Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artists Program (DCASE), West Collection, Chicago Artists Coalition, and a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Travel Scholarship. SaraNoa has been an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Chicago Artists Coalition, Montello Foundation, Wave Hill, Jackman Goldwasser Residency at the Hyde Park Art Center, Lois and Charles X. Carlson Painting Residency, Sedona Summer Colony, and the Bronx River Art Center. In 2025 SaraNoa will be an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and Dieu Donné. SaraNoa co-directed the 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago from 2017-2023. Recent exhibitions of their work have taken place at the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Daniel Faira Gallery, Toronto, CA; The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, ME; CA; Davis & Langdale, NY; Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, IL; 5533, Istanbul, among others. SaraNoa was named a Newcity magazine Breakout Artist in 2021. Mark’s work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, ARTNEWS, BOMB Magazine, ArtAsiaPacific, and more.

Image: SaraNoa Mark, Yazılıkaya, 2022, Concrete panels cast from carved clay originals.