Sarah Hinds

I use my work to examine my upbringing and my connections to American identity, asking: What must we do with what we are given? By examining what has been placed in my hands, I seek to pry apart the architectures of whiteness to examine its inherent violence. I began my process by revisiting the landscapes of the American Northeast—not only because it is where I am from but because it is the source of colonial violence in the United States. My work visualizes the sickness instilled in the land, a stain that has seeped into the grass, darkened the forests, and warped the home. I seek to engage with this perversion, a form that is seemingly ever-changing, a low-vibrational timbre that we have become inured to. I examine heirlooms, including a .22 caliber revolver given to me by my father and a St. Jude pendant inherited from my grandfather, and motifs of rot. I create images that ruminate on depth of shadow, resounding grays, and layers of texture—the latent image of a marred landscape. Conceptually, my interests lie in the abject, the powers of an etymological horror, a trembling in the face of something large, a religious type of fear, the violent split between the self and the other. In installation, my images sprawl over deconstructed twin bed frames, forming a tapestry that moves between hardness and drapery, an anti-altar, a blight.