Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide)

With her new work Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) aspires to acknowledge those processes that are rarely appreciated within present value systems focused on linear growth and material gain. Her research derives from a sense of urgency and commitment that the artist feels towards attempting to make a paradigm shift.

In Van der Heide's studio practice, for instance, the private confines of the studio allow for an intuitive process that lets work come into being in stutters, over a prolonged stretch of time. It requires a slow perception to recognise what is taking place. Such movements of reluctant materialisation can also be found elsewhere, in cycles of growth and collapse. Calling upon the figures of 'Mother Earth' and the Sun, Van der Heide thinks about the continuous processes of 'nature' in terms of value and investment. Her focus is on the value of what is there at any given moment, rather than on progress-based accumulation.

In Van der Heide's art, colour and light are subtly joined in works that enfold time and require time, and produce different imaginaries or levels of consciousness, transcending a cerebral understanding of things. On the other hand she employs a careful use of modernist vocabularies and motives that often imply a sharp assessment of Western systems of thinking, organizing and classifying. Her attitude towards a modernist legacy of art and the medium of painting in combination with language and performance is defined by a critical exploration of its potentials, and testifies to the sensitivity of a feminist position.

Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide)  (b.1977, Busan, Korea), lives in Berlin and Amsterdam

She was awarded the Theodora Niemeijer Prize in 2023, and was a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme (2022-2023). Since the late 1990s, Chang has created a rich body of work that traverses film, text, immersive film- and sound installations, performances, and painting. She combines spiritual evocations, historical research and the unraveling of colonial narratives creating works that act as historical repair, healing and belonging. Chang’s recent solo exhibitions include Moderna Museet (Stockholm, 2022-2023), Centraal Museum (Utrecht, 2023), A Rose is a rose is a rose (Amsterdam, 2023), ARGOS (Brussels, 2021) and CASCO (Utrecht, 2021), two-person exhibition with Youngjoon Kwak at ARKO Arts Centre, Seoul (2022). She has participated in the Bihar Biennial (Patna, India, 2023), Busan Biennale (2022), 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), the 5th Dhaka Art Summit (2020), and Contour Biennale (2019).

Sara@DAI:

2013-2014 Co-op Academy: Appropriation and Dedication