Sarah Księska

Sarah Księska works in the mediums of painting, drawing, and sculpture. She employs a distinctive, surrealistic, and fairy tale-like visual language to explore how science and technology affect contemporary spirituality and shape belief systems. The high degree of complexity of individual branches of knowledge and the inaccessible and incomprehensible code hidden behind everyday technologies create a perfect environment for the development of far-fetched, surrealistic beliefs. These in turn feed on symbols. In her practice, Księska examines these processes, using figuration to create her own symbolism. In the painting ‘Seeleganz’ [The Elegance of the Soul – Seele means soul in German] one can make out several elements such as lungs, sheep's head, flowers, symmetrical loops, some kind of fairy creature and a meadow — all seemingly combined into one mysterious organism. The title is based on a homonym — the name C. elegans [Caenorhabditis elegans] designates a free-living, non parasitic nematode. It is the first organism to have its whole genome sequenced and, so far, the only organism to have its connectome completed (a complete map of neural network connections). Thanks to the research on C. elegans we also know that the death of cells — also human cells — is programmed in genes. Księska seems to combine scientific knowledge with esotericism of the soul within one, single symbol.