Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar
Artist Statement:
My work speaks to the many layers within a life. I use donated or found vintage sewing pattern papers that I hand sew together to create a platform that explores the complexities of being female in our social habitat. The images are self-portraits that speak to a universal primal urge stemming from deep within our cellular makeup.The idea of the primal brain that still exists in all of us and how it effects our actions and dreams is an element to the work. Fragility, decay, power, rage, aging, convergence and the ephemeral weave through the materials on the thread I use to layer fabric and paper building an idea into an intrinsic experience from a female perspective. Sometimes flowers adorn the fabric at the point of decomposing, symbolizing an aging woman’s societal decay. I depict the hands and feet in color exclusively as a way to show emotion. Our hands take in and give out, and express pain or pleasure. Our feet keep us literally grounded to the Earth, and can show incredible emotion in the tenseness of the pose or the stretching in order to keep the body upright. They express so much, in so little.The works are not bound by straight edges.The work interacts with the viewer by being hung off the wall allowing the flowing of the breezes of people passing by, representing human behavior and its impact on an individual, activating the works through movement which helps in the process of deterioration where the goalof the work is to simply slowly embrace disintegration.
Bio:
Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar is a contemporary artist living and working in New Jersey. Her compelling and emotional artworks look to speak to the primitive side of the human existence and how that relates to modern day life. Sauerteig-Pilaar focuses on the female form as her muse, mostly conjured from self-portraits, where she utilizes her body to manipulate feelings of a quiet rage within women in the more domestic interiors of lives not usually viewed as remarkable or unique. She works to search out the uniting thread of feminism in the dark spaces of suburban life, and looks to thrust the spotlight on the unsaid struggles and betrayals of women in our current society.
Sauerteig-Pilaar received her BFA from Parson’s School of Design in 1993, and after living in New York City, relocated to New Jersey where she has continuously experimented with mediums that led to the eclectic mixed media paper constructions she is most notably recognized for. Her work has been showcased and celebrated in galleries and museums across the country. She was awarded the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation residency in Jersey City, NJ in 2022.
