Sarah Cameron Sunde – About The Artist

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Sarah Cameron Sundae stands in a rocky ocean. She is wearing a brown hat and a orange top over her wetsuit.
Photo by Mike Kepka

Sarah Cameron Sunde is an interdisciplinary artist and director working at the intersection of performance, video and public art. She is creator of 36.5 /A Durational Performance with the Sea (an ongoing work spanning seven years and six continents) and instigator/co-curator of Works on Water (a new triennial and artist-driven organization dedicated to art that is made on, in and with the water). Sunde served as Deputy Artistic Director of New Georges for 16 years (2001-2017), co-founded the live art collective Lydian Junction (2011-2014) and theater company Oslo Elsewhere (2004-2012), and is known internationally as Jon Fosse’s American director and translator (five U.S. premieres in New York and Pittsburgh). Among other spaces her work been seen at 3LD Art & Technology Center, the Knockdown Center, EFA Project Space, Rattlestick, Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theater and presented internationally in Norway, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, China, Uganda, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Residencies include LMCC Workspace, Watermill Center, Hermitage Foundation, Baryshnikov Art Center. Honors include Princess Grace Award, Creative Climate Award First Prize, funding from Invoking the Pause, LMCC Creative Engagement, LMCC / Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, Norwegian Consulate, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst. She holds a B.A. in Theater from UCLA and an M.F.A. in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice from The City College of New York, CUNY, and is currently teaches at Purchase College in New York. SarahCameronSunde.com


Artist Statement

I make live performance works and video works that play with scale and duration in order to investigate our human place in the environment. My work is an intimate encounter with our ephemeral nature, a fine line between complete abandon and utter control, action and stillness.

Time is my primary subject, both in content and form: I investigate ideas about “temporality of place,” connect ideas the ancient past with the distant future, and play with duration in order to expand individual and collective sensory experience.

I create interactive moments and situations that strive to stimulate dialogue between strangers and open new possibilities between the everyday and the existential.

Much of my visual arts process is informed by two decades of work as a theater-maker, director and translator. I believe in collaboration across disciplines, juxtaposing seemingly disparate materials, and letting narrative emerge. Since 2011, I have been experimenting with video and actively crossing formal boundaries, and become more and more rooted in engaging with communities, both local and global.