Sara Stern

Interviews by Brainard Carey

Sara Stern is an interdisciplinary artist from New York City. Her recent projects prod histories of urban development with speculative fiction. Stern has exhibited and screened her work in the US and internationally, at venues including SculptureCenter (Long Island City, NY), Anthology Film Archives (New York, NY), the Museum of the Moving Image (New York, NY), The Jewish Museum (New York, NY), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (Singapore). Stern received a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She is the recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, the Fountainhead Fellowship in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University, and several residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. In recent years, Stern has participated in The Watermill Center Artist Residency Program (Water Mill, NY), the Art & Law Program, the Object Movement Residency at The Center at West Park (New York, NY), and the Artist Residency at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center (West Rutland, VT). Installation view, Sara Stern, "Study for a Scene", 2024, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY, curated by Adam Liam Rose. (Center: “The window felt shattered,” 2024, two-channel video (rear and front projection, color/sound), mirror floor, windowed partition, 11:49 min, looped. Right: “Curtain Call,” 2024, Kiln-formed glass, single-channel spotlight video projection, pulley, custom mount, dimensions variable. Left: "Beckett's Chew (Where Credit is Due)," 2024, cast glass, single-channel rear projection (BW/silent), custom mount, 59 sec, looped.) Sara Stern, “Curtain Call,” 2024, Kiln-formed glass, single-channel spotlight video projection, pulley, custom mount, dimensions variable. The window felt shattered (2 min excerpt) from Sara Stern on Vimeo. Excerpt from "The window felt shattered": "The window felt shattered", 2024, single-channel version of two-channel video installation, color/sound, 11:49 min, looped. Credits for The window felt shattered: Director, Editor: Sara Stern, Mime: Bill Bowers, Violin & Viola: Pauline Kim Harris, Sound Design, Mix, Recording, Engineering, Mastering: Kevin Ramsay, Theremin: Sara Stern, Sound recording at Harvestworks - New York City, Excerpt from Dongmae by Pauline Kim Harris, Lauren Cauley, Violin, Annaliese Kowert, Violin, Pauline Kim Harris, Viola, Andrew Yee, Cello, John-Paul Norpoth, Bass, Recorded live at The Stone - New York City (2019). Several lines of text adapted from Naomi Klein's Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.