sarah irvin

ARTIST-STATEMENT

In the Private/Public series, I layered the words “public” and “private” in a blue-and-red-color-scheme that can be viewed with 3D glasses to produce an immersive yet disorienting experience. As a queer woman, I am interested in exploring the delineation between public and private spaces, how these spaces impact each other, and how our definitions of them produce implications both personally and within the larger legal system. While these two types of spaces are never fully stable or discrete from one another, we find it critical to define them as inherently different.

Through the visual blurring of the words “public” and “private”, I hope that this series creates a reminder that because we actively construct and reconstruct these vital concepts, they are in jeopardy of being fully deconstructed if we do not hold on to and defend them.

ARTIST BIO

Sarah Irvin earned a Master of Fine of Arts from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia. Irvin has been featured in more than twenty solo shows, as well as more than fifty group exhibitions, across the United States and abroad. Irvin’s work is included in the collections of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Capital One, Four Seasons Hotel, Federal Reserve Bank, and Royal Caribbean, as well as the private collections of Quirk Hotel and the University of Richmond.

She is the founder of the Artist Parent Index, a searchable database of artists making work about their experience with reproduction and caring for their children. Irvin is represented by Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, and Kathryn Markel Fine Arts and Massey Klein Gallery, both in New York City. She is an independent curator and an adjunct instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University.