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Sarah Rose Guitian Nederlof

video , textiel , Taal , sculptuur , schrijven , performance , Objecten , Lichaam , installatie , fotografie , Experimenteel

My name is Sarah Rose Guitian Nederlof. I was born and raised in Madrid by a Spanish father and a Dutch mother. In 2012 I moved to Rotterdam, where I currently live and work. The longer I live in the Netherlands, the stronger I tend to keep my Spanish side alive; simultaneously experiencing that my home is not entirely in Spain either. This feeling of in betweenness and alienation has influenced how I look at the world and has become fuel for my artistic practice.

I collect discarded materials. These materials (plastic bags, napkins, packaging materials and abandoned textiles) carry traces of personal use (status, identity, memory, hierarchy, value), and systems (mass-consumption, abundance, capitalism). I am interested in the transformative potential of these ordinary materials and their relationship to the human body.

Throughout my practice the mediums I work with have in the past years evolved from photography to video, observation to sculpture, sound to text, video performance to live performance. Through this evolving multidisciplinary approach, I create spatial assemblages and live works that explore the intimate, fragile and the unnoticed in our daily lives. Since 2021 I have integrated my own body in my works. I approach the act of making as performative and have translated this work method to live performance, giving my work a new physicality.

My process is slow, exploratory and intuitive. Each project arises from a long-term research that starts finds its origin in an observation, a feeling, an unintended encounter in public space. It is usually an autobiographical experience that I link, through my work, to universal themes, such as loss, belongingness, identity, biculturalism, social pressure and vulnerability. I make work to share my considerations and concerns on these themes in the hope to foster more awareness and solidarity.

Not Your Typical Publication
Not Your Typical Publication - Coming soon. This publication might become a performance again, not by me this time, unless you ask. I would be glad. I invite you to find your own way into this text. Read, interpret it somewhere unusual. To a friend, to someone you haven’t met yet, to a pile of clothes. Play with rhythm, with silence and breath, be present and listen to your body.
Archive of a Body
Archive of a Body - This project is temporarily on hold. For a new performance piece, I created wearable glass sculptures at MAKE Eindhoven. These sculptures will serve as “partners” for performers who will work with them through contact improvisation. The design of the sculptures stems from previously developed costumes, designed for the torso and made from plastic packaging material. This design forms the starting point for the translation to glass. The transition from plastic to glass marks an important development in my practice and the execution of this new work. Whereas the plastic costumes were light, ephemeral and dependent on my physical presence in a performance, the wearable glass sculptures take on a fixed, autonomous form. They can exist independently and retain their expressiveness, even outside a performative live context. This shift opens up new possibilities for presentation – from performance to sculpture, from temporary to permanent, from live to installation.
I met you instead
I met you instead - A site-specific work I made for De Aanschouw. I always longed to present a work there, charmed by its unpretentiousness, being a small exhibition window in which the work is 24/7 on display and accesible to everyone. It felt as the right context to translate my obsession with discarded objects in public space, to elevate one of them into something worth the attention also for other eyes. A way of making that encounter tangible, which would otherwise be temporary. I met this body while looking for someone else. At first I hesitated, the morning after I went back to the place of our encounter and took them with me. Epoxy, Collected plastic bag, leaves, 62x120x20cm.
Nothing and All Happen at Once
Nothing and All Happen at Once - This was my first live performance. I explored the boundary between what is and is not perceived as performative. For example, I incorporated seemingly everyday actions, such as audible breathing in and out, into the performance. By magnifying such gestures and focusing attention on them, they take on a new layer of meaning. On the other hand, using three written texts, different clothes and body movements, I explored themes such as exhaustion, grief, identity and the influence of the external gaze. By bringing these different elements together in one space, I also immediately created a context for connecting with the audience and opening up space for dialogue. © Florian Braakman
Untitled
the caress of bygone times - Central to this project are the costumes I am at present designing from packaging materials. I use them as both stand alone sculptures and as partners in body improvisations. These materials, originally conceived for a single use, take on a new life as they wrap around my body, becoming vehicles of shelter and protection. I use my personal discomforts and insecurities as fuel for the improvisations, finding refuge and support in the presence of these objects. Through this work I am to create new narratives around belongingness, the perception upon the (female) body and sustainable practices (by working with collected materials).

 This project was developed during a one-month residency in Nea Livera. Through the different improvisations I explored as well the narrations that arise between the remote nature of the region and the recognisable plastic objects.
Chronophotography studies
Chronophotography studies - Parallel to my projects, I conduct research into chronophotography by extracting still images from my performance recordings. I am interested in playing with the illusion of movement through still images. These images serve as inspiration for new projects.
Encounter III
Encounter III - This work is part of a collective and self-organised exhibition together with Ceola Tunstall-Behrens, Rawad Baaklini, Florian Braakman, Liza Wolters accompanied by a written piece by Hilde Onis. The Things That Find Us: The work that each of us presented individually stems from unplanned encounters. While sometimes we intentionally seek inspiration, more often than not, inspiration finds us. There's complexity in allowing things to come to us and thrive, and there's significant value in daring to wander and be open. This openness can feel like a subtle form of resistance, where the unknown is given space, deviating from preconceived notions. I wanted to expand my practice by working with a new material: epoxy. Continuing with my obsession with plastic bags I decided to use epoxy as a tool to 'capture' the movement of wind in a bag. This new material brings in a rigidity to an object that is normally characterized as fleeting and light.
Encounter I, Encounter III
Encounter I, Encounter III - On view during Limburg Biennale 2024 at Marres, Maastricht (NL).
Encounters
Encounters - I finally had the time -and context- to play around with the materialisation of my photographic archive. I have always been fascinated by the everyday things that find us before we consciously find them. For a long time I wondered how to materialise and grasp the essence of these encounters. Finally, after years of having this materialisation only as a prototype, I came to make a final and professional translation.
(con tener) cuerpo
(con tener) cuerpo - This project began as an investigation into packaging materials, such as fruit nets and bubble wrap, during a three-month working period at Wilde Weten in Rotterdam. I find it fascinating that these objects seem to belong nowhere and everywhere. No one sees them, but they can be found everywhere. Because they are such mundane everyday objects , their meaning almost slips away, and I find it interesting to delve into such objects and treat them as special, worthy of study. I use the various outcomes of the research to create site-specific installations in which the various components activate each other. I used this work period to explore the relationship between sculpture and video performance. Whereas before I had moulded everyday objects in plaster, I now created new and abstract forms that I ultimately used both as stand-alone sculptures and as partners in physical improvisations.
(con tener) cuerpo
(con tener) cuerpo - Installation of self-organised Open Studio in the Project Space of Het Wilde Weten, 2023
(con tener) cuerpo
(con tener) cuerpo - The volumes of the casts I made from the packaging material connected in a strange way to the volumes of my body. They entered my personal space, the space that people still consider part of themselves, but also transformed into armour or shields. The way in which I record experiments and improvisations is multifaceted. Sometimes I film something on a tripod, from which I then extract stills, which together form a chronophotography. Playing with materials and volumes around my own body opened up a new beginning that I continue to develop to this day.
The Manifest of Remembrance
The Manifest of Remembrance - I am interested in everyday objects, especially those designed for their function: such as plastic bags, bottles and other packaging materials. Due to their single use, these objects quickly lose their original value and turn into waste. The tension between function and waste fascinates me; it is precisely there that I see room to create a revaluation of these materials. In addition, these materials are part of what can be considered contemporary archaeology. What will these objects tell us about our habits in the future? Specifically for this group exhibition organised by The Tiny Art Gallery I made this work using air-dry clay. I took a photograph from my archive as inspiration and re-enacted it in miniature. I am interested in the playfulness that arises when translating a recognisable object into a new size, material and context.
La Sobremesa
La Sobremesa - When, in 2022, Stedelijk Museum Breda and Witte Rook invited me to take up a residency in Breda on the basis of an award (from the KLEIO Foundation), this resulted in “La Sobremesa”, an anthropological-artistic investigation into the paper napkin, a fixture in Spanish dining culture. Every café in Spain has a napkin holder with napkins that are just too small to wipe your hands on, and the words “thank you for your visit” printed on them. I had noticed that napkins are hardly ever used in the Netherlands. Napkins are a very minor aspect of a food culture, but one that is bursting with cultural significance. They are both specific and ubiquitous. But since the COVID pandemic, the napkin holder has been quietly disappearing. Now more than ever, I feel the need to celebrate and immortalise this everyday object through my work. The project culminated in an installation, a spatial assemblage in which the various components entered into a relationship with each other and invited Dutch visitors to reflect on their habits and relationship with the napkin.
La Sobremesa, 2022
La Sobremesa - Close up.
An Unforeseen Encounter - When the rain stopped in Blanca, I could finally go outside. I had used the time to expand my collection of plastic bags by collecting plastic bag from the local market every week. Whereas I had previously worked from a collection of objects and translations into sculpture, I decided to make the interaction between people and objects visible. For this work, I practised and moved with the material full-time for three months to establish a collaboration between my body and the bag. I identified with the material and let it determine my movements. I see the bag, a worthless residual material, as a companion to free my body from the cage I experience it to be. The bag is looking for its place in public space, just like me. The bag served as a metaphor for my search to belong somewhere as a bicultural woman. This was the first time I captured the relationship between my body and an object and used it as a work.
Market Bag
Market Bag - During a work period at Daily Practice in Rotterdam I developed this new series. Each bag is one-of-a-kind, made out of clay ca 4x3x1cm. I was editing the video performance An Unforeseen Encounter. I am interested in exploring the different qualities of an object, in this case a plastic bag. I observed and captured the different postures a plastic bag can adopt, recreating these in miniature using clay.
An Unforeseen Encounter - Installation overview of work period at Daily Practice, Rotterdam. 4K video work presented with a landscape of miniature clay plastic bag sculptures, 2021 © Beeldsmits
The Manifest of Remembrance
The Manifest of Remembrance - In 2021, I lived in Blanca, a small village in southern Spain. I had done a residency here in 2019, focusing on everyday objects that I encountered there. I followed them and recorded their developments with a point-and-shoot camera. In 2021, I returned to translate the work I had made there into a new medium. My plan was to create a work in the landscape, but due to bad weather, I changed the direction of the project. This led to this project in which I moulded objects characteristic of the customs of the place in plaster. I was interested in both the local application of these objects and their material properties. The translation from photography to sculpture gave me the opportunity to study these objects closely and attach new narratives to them by translating them into a different material. I created a site-specific installation, orchestrating the sculptures within a rectangle (2x3m) made of locally collected sand clay, as if it were an archaeological excavation.
The Manifest of Remembrance
The Manifest of Remembrance - Close up.
The Right Orange
The Right Orange - In 2020, a small study called “The Right Orange” focused on mandarin peel. My Dutch grandfather carefully peels and calmly eats five mandarins every morning. Every time I come across a mandarin peel on the street, I wonder how and by whom it was peeled. Perhaps it was due to the isolation of the COVID pandemic that I was no longer satisfied with observing and photographing objects, but felt the need to physically express the study in material form. I felt the urgency to work with my hands and started reproducing found peels in plaster on a true scale, trying to approximate the colour and texture of the peels. I see the peels as a personification of my grandfather, a material proof of someone's presence.
The Right Orange, Publicatie
The Right Orange - Set of 5 cards, 15x10cm, two-colour risograph print, Munken Pure Cream 300gsm Edition of 18 (sold out), 2020
The Detail Hunter
The Detail Hunter - Since 2012, I have been photographing the world around me with my phone, my point-and-shoot camera, and my digital camera. In 2012, I moved from Madrid to Rotterdam to study at the art academy. Documenting my surroundings helped me understand my place in a new city, to create a kind of anchor. My timid nature meant that I often looked at the ground, which over the years has developed into a fascination for discarded objects floating in My timid attitude meant that I often looked at the ground, which over the years has developed into a fascination for discarded objects floating in public spaces.

Werkperiode MAKE Eindhoven

Datum:
Locatie: MAKE Eindhoven

Expanded Spaces, residentie

Datum:
Locatie: Nea Livera

Encounter I & III, groepstentoonstelling

Datum:
Locatie: Marres, Huis voor Hedendaagse Cultuur

The Things That Find Us, groepstentoonstelling

Datum:
Locatie: Delftsestraat 33
In samenwerking met: Ceola Tunstall-Behrens, Florian Braakman, Rawad Baaklini en Liza Wolters

(con tener) cuerpo, residentie

Datum:
Locatie: Het Wilde Weten

The Manifest of Remembrance, groepstentoonstelling

Datum:
Locatie: Sofia
In samenwerking met: Tiny Art Gallery x Posta Space

Wild Summer of Art, groepstentoonstelling

Datum:
Locatie: Brutus

La Sobremesa, residentie

Datum:
Locatie: Witte Rook
In samenwerking met: Witte Rook en Stedelijk Museum Breda

An Unforeseen Encounter, presentatie

Datum:
Locatie: Worm
In samenwerking met: Off Screen

An Unforeseen Encounter, werk periode

Datum:
Locatie: Daily Practice

AADK, residentie

Datum:
Locatie: Blanca
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