Sara Bjarland (b.1981, Helsinki) is a Finnish artist based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2007 and in 2012-2013 she participated in the studio programme at Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Ghent. Recent exhibitions include What My Hands Know at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam (2023), Deposits at Sculptor Gallery in Helsinki (2022), with Love, curated by Maria Ragnestam, Museum Anna Nordlander in Skellefteå, Constant Eruptions at Hopstreet Gallery, Brussels (2020) and Crumple, fail, faint, fall at Galleri Sinne, Helsinki (2020), Uncertainty and Ground Conditions at DASH, Kortrijk (2019). In 2020 she received the William Thuring award from the Finnish Arts Association and in 2019 she was one of the five short listed artists for Below Zero Prize for Finnish artists (initiated by the Finnish Institute in London). Her work has been acquired by Kiasma Museum for Contemporary Art (Helsinki), The Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (Helsinki) and several private collections in Belgium, Finland and The Netherlands.
For her sculptures, installations, photos and videos, Sara Bjarland collects discarded objects or litter from waste heaps. She searches the streets in garbage containers and container parks and takes the broken, faded and stained items she finds under her care and back to her studio. Used mops, old ventilation pipes and textiles from worn-out furniture are exposed, turned inside out or take on new shapes.
Her making process is intuitive and takes into account the sculptural and aesthetic qualities of the various objects. She investigates how these worthless materials can serve as meaning carriers for a new life as a work of art. Sometimes she appropriates the objects she finds and changes them in such a way that a parasol, sponge or sunshade evoke new associations. Sometimes she casts the weathered chairs, abandoned cacti or worn car tires in classic materials such as ceramic or bronze. By multiplying the number of objects in her work, she simultaneously shows the magnitude of an ecological problem and asks questions about the many things we think we need so much one day, and the the next day stack it on the ever-growing waste mountain.
Sara Bjarland creates a contemporary landscape in which boundaries fade and forms an intermediate area where every lifeless object is transformed into a mobile organism. She subtly pays attention to inanimate and living things and gives new appreciation to what has been thrown away, broken and banished. With her work she overturns the strict division between life and death, between the natural and the artificial, beauty and tragedy.
Cover image: Sara Bjarland. Photo by Joke Schut.