SARAH MAPLE – 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY EXPO
I still wish i had a penis
Opening of the exhibition is during the Opening Gallery Season 2021 2022
The exhibition is on view until Saturday 2 October
Discovery
About twelve years ago we discovered a tiny .gif image online: Signs, Sarah Maple's revealing graduation work. This work continued to intrigue and we started following Maple for a period of time. She continued to surprise us with her artistic consistency, wit and humor. We have now been working together for 10 years. In that time Maple has become a well-known British personality, in 2020 she created a world first Video Art Sitcom (an art-com) and Marina Abramovic recently selected her work for Abramovic's personal TV broadcast. A number of these works can also be seen during the exhibition.
Every exhibition Maple enriches us with her free ideas on the themes of identity, religion, (functioning of) the art world, feminism, xenophobia, dominant masculinity and freedom of expression.
Self-centered
Maple often takes center stage to challenge stereotypes and normative behavior. She confronts complex issues with humor, irony and a surprising honesty. Her personal mixed religious and cultural background - her mother is Muslim and her father Christian - defines much of her work. She works in various disciplines ranging from collage to performance.
What to see
In addition to her new works Portraits with fans and Cutouts, also well-known Maple classics such as The Opposite of a Feminist, Fake News, Fighting Fire with Fire and If I Loved You It Was Because of Your Hair… You can find about the latest work at the last bullet more info.
Sitcom – a meta experience
In our exhibition Maple's sharpest work to date will debut in The Netherlands: The Sarah Maple Show, a satire on the artworld that she both rejoices in and despairs at.
This key work is a ground breaking series of short films that fuse art with sitcoms. An ‘art-com’ if you will.
Exploring the experience of being an artist, and a very particular outspoken artist, each film is a semiautobiographical piece, a heightened reality that draws influence from Extras and Curb Your Enthusiasm as well as seminal artists such as Cindy Sherman and Sarah Lucas.
The fictional sitcom/video art will be a meta experience, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Maple aim to push the boundaries of what art can be and who it is available to.
As befits a Maple exhibition, the gallery will be decorated unconventionally and Sarah Maple will be present during the opening of the gallery season
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Information
• Sarah Maple's award-winning artworks, films and performances have been acquired/ exhibited at Tate Britain, Birmingham Museum, Golden Thread Gallery, The Hyman Collection, The Ned, New Art Exchange, Imago Mundi, Queens University Belfast, York, College Galleries Pennsylvania, Tallin Art Hall Estonia and SoHo House among others.
• Marina Abramovic has recently selected Maple's video performances Freedom of Speech, Thoughts and Prayers and Dedicated to World Peace for her personal TV broadcast on Sky Arts. These performances can also be seen during the exhibition.
• In 2011, Sarah Meuleman made the 60-minute documentary Sarah's Barbaren, which can be seen via VPRO broadcast.
• The unmissable and controversial work The World As We Know It made its debut during Art Rotterdam 2021 on the outside area of the Van Nelle factory.
• The work If I Loved You It Was Because of Your Hair… is inspired by two iconic moments: Frida Kahlo's divorce from husband Diego and Britney Spear's infamous public collapse after her breakup in 2007 in which she shaved her head. Maple is fascinated by how women can lose control of their lives and bodies. “I'm interested in the ways we're trying to regain that control. I found something powerfully poetic in this act, as if removing hair so related to female beauty and sexuality could be a way to regain control of our lives and bodies.”
The work is now relevant again due to the disputed trusteeship of her father, who still has enormous control over Britney's life, right down to birth control.