Artist Statement
Through photography and video, I perform as both subject and director of subversive acts. I am interested in the gestures, postures, and clothing that make up a legible identity and how these can be disrupted and refigured. I have poured acetone out of a coffee carafe, re-educated my phone with Pitbull lyrics, masqueraded as a magazine cover, and emerged from the San Francisco Bay in full office wear. I wonder what can be revealed by wearing the mask of another? What can be revealed when wearing a mask of your own image?
Absurdity is my strategy of seduction; familiar signs of identity get twisted, flattened and decontextualized. In my photographic images, I can be a cowboy taken out of the desert, a white-collar Venus born again each work day, or a living statue on a wooden pedestal. My body is a sculptural tool that allows me to find potential in a space of impossibility. In the paradox of self-performance, I wear a mask not to conceal but to reveal the mask that is my face.
About
Sarah Player Morrison is a multidisciplinary artist based in Richmond, CA. She recently completed her MFA at Mills College. She is a graduate fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts from July 2019 – June 2020.
EDUCATION
MFA Art Practice, Mills College, 2019
BA Practice of Art, UC Berkeley, 2011
BA Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, 2011
EXHIBITIONS
2020 Believe Only The Caravan’s Trace: 2020 Graduate Fellowship Exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito
2020 Over and Under, Richmond Art Center, Richmond
2019 Shelf Life: MFA Thesis Exhibition, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland
2019 Support the Tropes - MFA Video Showcase, Artist Television Access, San Francisco
2018 Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition, SOMArts, San Francisco
2018 Potluck, Slidespace 123, Oakland
2017 Sight Unscene, Roll Up Project, Oakland
2017 Sculpture as a Verb, Underline Projects, Berkeley
2017 UC Berkeley Alumni Show, Worth Ryder Gallery, Berkeley
2013 Public Education Juried Show, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco
2012 Corporeal, Martina }{ Johnston Gallery, Berkeley
2011 Wednesday Night Club – Honors Show, Worth Ryder Gallery, Berkeley
HONORS & AWARDS
2019 Graduate Fellowship, Headlands Center for the Arts
2018 Murphy Cadogan Award & Scholarship, The San Francisco Foundation
2011 Certificate of Excellence in Painting, UC Berkeley
2011 Highest Honors, Practice of Art, UC Berkeley
2011 Honors Studio, UC Berkeley
TEACHING & RESEARCH PRACTICE
2019 Advanced Drawing, Teaching Assistant to Yulia Pinkusevich, Mills College
2018 Advanced Painting, Teaching Assistant to Jenifer Wofford, Mills College
PUBLICATIONS
2019 MFA Now Catalog, Root Division, San Francisco