Sarah Ciurysek is a Canadian artist working mainly in photography, video, and installation to examine our relationship to the ground. The artwork typically consists of large-scale colour photographs of soil, grass, fields, and floors; these works reference graves, death, life, nourishment, history, archeology, and rural sensibilities and concerns.
Sarah was raised in northern Alberta and continues to make much of her work there. She trained at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (BFA 2003), Parsons The New School for Design, and Concordia University (MFA 2007). Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the US, in the UK and Austria, and in South Africa. She has participated in national and international residencies and has been the recipient of Canada Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts grants. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.
Sarah Ciurysek is a Canadian artist working mainly in photography, video, and installation to examine our relationship to the ground. The artwork typically consists of large-scale colour photographs of soil, grass, fields, and floors; these works reference graves, death, life, nourishment, history, archeology, and rural sensibilities and concerns.
Sarah was raised in northern Alberta and continues to make much of her work there. She trained at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (BFA 2003), Parsons The New School for Design, and Concordia University (MFA 2007). Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the US, in the UK and Austria, and in South Africa. She has participated in national and international residencies and has been the recipient of Canada Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts grants. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.
Sarah Ciurysek is a Canadian artist working mainly in photography, video, and installation to examine our relationship to the ground. The artwork typically consists of large-scale colour photographs of soil, grass, fields, and floors; these works reference graves, death, life, nourishment, history, archeology, and rural sensibilities and concerns.
Sarah was raised in northern Alberta and continues to make much of her work there. She trained at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (BFA 2003), Parsons The New School for Design, and Concordia University (MFA 2007). Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the US, in the UK and Austria, and in South Africa. She has participated in national and international residencies and has been the recipient of Canada Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts grants. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.
Sarah Ciurysek is a Canadian artist working mainly in photography, video, and installation to examine our relationship to the ground. The artwork typically consists of large-scale colour photographs of soil, grass, fields, and floors; these works reference graves, death, life, nourishment, history, archeology, and rural sensibilities and concerns.
Sarah was raised in northern Alberta and continues to make much of her work there. She trained at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (BFA 2003), Parsons The New School for Design, and Concordia University (MFA 2007). Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the US, in the UK and Austria, and in South Africa. She has participated in national and international residencies and has been the recipient of Canada Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts grants. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.
Sarah Ciurysek is a Canadian artist working mainly in photography, video, and installation to examine our relationship to the ground. The artwork typically consists of large-scale colour photographs of soil, grass, fields, and floors; these works reference graves, death, life, nourishment, history, archeology, and rural sensibilities and concerns.
Sarah was raised in northern Alberta and continues to make much of her work there. She trained at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (BFA 2003), Parsons The New School for Design, and Concordia University (MFA 2007). Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the US, in the UK and Austria, and in South Africa. She has participated in national and international residencies and has been the recipient of Canada Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts grants. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.
Green for Awakening
Glass, solder, steel, programmed light projection
8' x 6.5'
2025
Installation: PLATFORM Centre, Winnipeg
Large diamonds of green glass, each with a different shade of green as well as of varying texture and translucency, are interspersed with an opaque black. When light is projected through the glass, dappled light is created: diamonds of light that move slowly, glimmering while they briefly appear and disappear.
This is Green for Awakening: a 8’ x 6.5’ wall made of 4 stained-glass modular panels, and animated by programmed light. I conceived of the installation after learning that dappled light in forests is the result of trees’ leaves overlapping, creating apertures (or, in other words, leaves as pinhole cameras). This link to photography is conceptually evocative for me. There are other parallels: like a physical photograph, the wall can be read as a picture that is mainly 2D, or flat, but it is also a 3D object. The glass wall can be viewed from the front as well as the back, but it is also looked through, like a negative.
And of course, both stained glass and photography are activated by light.
The title for the piece, Green for Awakening, comes from a Ruth Padel poem, “Salon Noir” (2018):
“green for awakening for bringing life
back from the dead renewal
in earth and of the earth”
Images Credit: Daisy Wu