Projects

Landlords

LANDLORDS (2022)

Four video billboards installed along Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles as part of the virtual exhibition Echoes, an experimental collaboration between Epoch Gallery and LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab. Link to virtual exhibition HERE

Landlords 1-4  introduces the landlord as mosquito, presented as a series of shimmering long-takes installed along Wilshire Blvd. The landlord-mosquito feeds, and never stops feeding, in a series of eternal loops. The videos conjure the mundane horror of the landlord-tenant relationship within an environment of wealth and property consolidation by large real estate corporations that withhold, rather than provide, housing— an investment strategy that relies on logics of scarcity and extraction.

billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard situated in ruins of construction on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles
a round wrinkled shape, close up of the body, with a mosquito perched on top against a black background
billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard situated in ruins of construction on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles
billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard situated in front of cement corporate building with grid of windows on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles
billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard installed on the facade of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art lined with palm trees on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles

Screen Lovers

A monumental video projection onto a windowless wall of a five story building with downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video shows an extreme closeup of a human eye filmed through a vibrant colorful array of screen reflections, it is ambiguous whether the eye is emanating light or receiving light.

SCREEN LOVERS

4k color video with sound, 2022

Through a series of extreme close-ups, Screen Lovers (2022) examines the way we modulate ourselves between onscreen and offscreen realities—as attention, intimacy, and surveillance operate across digital and physical space. Tracking the gaze, Screen Lovers (2022) attempts to discern forms of shelter, thought, and fluid time that are produced via screens and projection. Screen Lovers (2022) questions how we might participate in these hybrid encounters, authoring greater agency for ourselves– navigating welcome and unwelcome forms of visibility, and fissures between identity, technology, and the body.

A monumental video projection onto a windowless wall of a five story building with downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video shows an extreme closeup of a human eye filmed through a vibrant colorful array of screen reflections, it is ambiguous whether the eye is emanating light or receiving light.
A monumental video projection onto a windowless wall of a five story building with downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video shows an extreme closeup of a human eye filmed through a vibrant colorful array of screen reflections, it is ambiguous whether the eye is emanating light or receiving light.
A monumental video projection onto a windowless wall of a five story building with downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video shows an extreme closeup of a human eye filmed through a vibrant colorful array of screen reflections, it is ambiguous whether the eye is emanating light or receiving light.
A monumental video projection onto a windowless wall of a five story building with downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video shows an extreme closeup of a human eye filmed through a vibrant colorful array of screen reflections, it is ambiguous whether the eye is emanating light or receiving light.
A monumental video projection onto a windowless wall of a five story building with downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video shows an extreme closeup of a human eye filmed through a vibrant colorful array of screen reflections, it is ambiguous whether the eye is emanating light or receiving light.

Perfect Touch (2021)

Perfect Touch, 2021, 2-channel 5k color video

In Perfect Touch 2021, a set of hands present string figure games in sequence: giving and receiving, relaying connections, modeling networks, patterns to inhabit, digit upon digit. The two channels, situated on opposite faces, form a digital embrace across a divide, mirroring with difference. String figure games model our interconnectedness, searching for a way to visualize the influence that one body exerts on another. Making use of the physical interval, Perfect Touch explores the in-between spaces and invisible entanglements between us, navigating connection alongside distance and loss.

Exhibited as part of Luminex “Dialogues of Light” an outdoor public art exhibition in downtown Los Angeles curated by Carman Zella of NOW ART

Projected on the North and South Faces of 1154 Olive St. Downtown Los Angeles April 11, 2021

photo credit: Ian Byers-Gamber

Lavender House (2020)

LAVENDER HOUSE

Lavender House, 2020, 4k color video with sound, duration 24:08

“Lavender House” narrates the life of a tenant and her evolving relationship to the empty house next door, a rent-controlled building left uninhabited, held from the market by real estate investors. “Lavender House” delivers an embodied history of rent control, anxiety, motherhood, and resistance. Part auto-fiction, memoir, and psychological thriller.

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Sarah Rara’s multi-disciplinary practice—including video, sound, writing, performance—explores the position of witness within fragile systems. Rara is a contributing member of the ongoing project lucky dragons (with Luke Fischbeck). Their work, solo and in collaboration, has been presented at such institutions as the Hammer Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial), the Centre Georges Pompidou, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, London’s Institute for Contemporary Art, PS1 in New York, REDCAT and LACMA in Los Angeles, MOCA Los Angeles, the 54th Venice Biennale, and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. Their first volume of poems “Earth Breakup” was released by Hesse Press Fall 2015. The chapbook “Chronic Objector” was released by Miniature Garden Spring 2017. Rara is a 2018 recipient of the LACMA Art + Technology fellowship. Rara is Assistant Professor of Moving Image at Williams College.

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