Artist: Sarah Schönfeld
Exhibition title: Seeing Double
Venue: Marso, Mexico City
Date: March 21 – May 11, 2015
Photography: Images courtesy of the artist and Marso
Seeing Double is the result of Berlin based artist Sarah Schönfeld’s residency at MARSO. The show examines the distinctions between Western and indigenous perspectives of healing. Western objects whose fetishized understanding arises from an exchange value perspective are embedded with the indigenous perspective of spirit possession, producing an uncan- ny dialogue that speaks to the contemporary condition of meaning making. Reimagined as “magic tools” the objects within the work coexist in a precarious space of liminality where categorical boundaries are blurred. Schönfeld conceptually foregrounds the mythological process of the hero’s journey as a narrative mode of healing for the exhibition and utilizes the synthetic as its material reveal. Seeing Double takes into account the necessary aspect of humor in times of duress that’s gives evidence to the paradoxical gravity of our times.
Sarah Schönfeld was born in 1979 in Berlin and studied at University of the Visual Arts Berlin from 1999-2006 with Lothar Baumgarten. She has exhibited internationally in Switzerland, Brazil, Italy and Tokyo and holds several grants like Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, DAAD, Villa Aurora L.A. and Foam Talents award 2014. She currently lives and works in Mexico City and Berlin.