SANDRA LAPAGE | THE EMERGENCE OF UNCONSCIOUS
Sandra Lapage received her MFA from the Maine College of Art in 2013. Since then, she has participated in collective and solo exhibitions in Brazil, Europe, and the United States, including at the Brazilian Embassy in Brussels (2007). Her work was featured at the Ribeirão Preto Art Museum for the 2006 exhibition program and at The Centro Cultural São Paulo in 2012.
In 2004 and 2005, she exhibited at the Gowanus Loft (NYC), and in 2018 and 2019 her work has been featured at the Blumenau Art Museum and Aura Arte Contemporânea (São Paulo) as well as at the Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto and Andrea Rehder Arte Contemporânea (São Paulo).
Since 2019, her work has also been exhibited at the A60 Contemporary Artspace (Milan), KUNSTHALLE am Hamburger Platz (Berlin), Surface Gallery (UK), Tianjin International Digital Imaging Exhibition (China) and CICA Museum (Korea) in 2020.
Sandra has resided in various institutions such as the Fondation Château Mercier (Switzerland) and NARS Foundation (NYC) for 6 months in 2014, Elefante Centro Cultural (Brasilia) in 2015, Camac Art Center (France) and Paul Artspace (USA) in 2016, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017 and Monson Arts in 2019. She will attend ART OMI and Odyssée (Château de Goutelas, France) hopefully sometime in 2020 or 2021.
Sandra was a visiting artist at the Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia) and Maine College of Art (Portland), United States.
In addition to her solo work, she develops a collaborative work in the collective Eclusa and runs, with 9 other artists and designers, the independent art space Vão in São Paulo.
“I create sculptures from trash and discarded materials that are often malleable and even wearable and address a series of environmental and behavioral issues. These sculptures unfold into installations, photo-performances, and photographs.
Control is an illusion, and through the work, I exercise the acceptance of what recycled and everyday materials reveal, from accidents to new processes. The vital materiality of quotidian objects is my starting point and leads me to a reevaluation of the dichotomy between life/inanimate, human/nature. I believe that a shift in the hierarchy can result in a greener approach to self, culture, and nature.
In the emergence of the unconscious, I am interested in the appearance of primal forms, remnants of timeless myths, and ceremonial objects. In this sense, I refer to Joseph Beuys’ shamanic practice: by limiting the presence of consciousness and the censoring ego in the work, I hope to channel essential poetry. My work is made of impurity, error, failure, frustration, insubordination, excessiveness, and organic accumulation.”