Sara Black

MFA, 2006, University of Chicago; BA, 2003, Ecology/Art, Evergreen State College; BFA, 2001, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. 

Sara Black’s artwork uses conscious processes of building or horticulture as a time-based method; diseased wood, ecosystem-specific trees/plants, inherited building materials or other exhausted objects as material; and creates works that expose the complex ways in which things and people are suspended in worlds together. Her work interrogates the fallacy of individualism to imagine entangled and survivable futures. Sara collaborates with artist Amber Ginsburg, political theorist Sam Frost, and digital artist Marc Downie. She is a member of Deep Time Chicago, the woodworking collective Project Fielding serving femme and nonbinary woodworkers, the Anthropocene Commons and the Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange. Sara received her MFA from the University of Chicago in 2006 and is currently associate professor of Sculpture and graduate coordinator at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Smart Museum of Art, New York’s Park Avenue Armory; Boston’s Tuft University Gallery; Minneapolis’ Soap Factory, Berlin’s HKW, Rio de Janeiro's Anthropocene Campus, the Thailand Biennial, and many more. Sara is a recent fellow with the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and a current fellow with the Neubauer Collegium.