Sarah Sze | US Representative at 2013 Venice Biennale

SVA alumnus Sarah Sze (MFA 1997 Fine Arts) has been selected by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to represent the United States at the 55th Venice Biennale, one of the art world’s most prestigious venues for exhibition.

The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) has for over a century been at the forefront of research and promotion concerning new trends in contemporary arts and to date features 30 permanent national pavilions. Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze has been creating site-specific installations at the juncture of sculpture, painting, and architecture using a variety of everyday objects, from paper clips and styrofoam cups to light bulbs and electric fans. Her work has been known to penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings, and burrow into the ground. For the Biennale, Sze told the New York Times that her installation Triple Point will create a sequence of environments inside the U.S. pavilion. “I plan to create a new commission in the courtyard that brings the inside out,” she said. “Wandering around Venice without a map, you find the most incredible things. And I’m hoping to create an immersive environment that deals with that abstract experience of discovery.”

Holly Block, director of the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Carey Lovelace, a critic and independent curator will organize the exhibition with Sze, and the Bronx Museum will serve as the sponsoring institution. In addition, the Bronx Museum will create an online component that features streaming video documenting Sze’s conception, fabrication, and installation of the piece. “Her work is so sensitive to its surroundings,” Ms. Lovelace said in the New York Times article. “I will be fascinated to see how she transforms the American pavilion without physically changing the architecture.”

To learn more about the Venice Biennale, visit labiennale.org/en/art.

Image: Sarah Sze, courtesy the artist.