Sara Muthi - Instagram Takeover

This week’s guest instagram takeover (14-18 August 2023) is Sara Muthi, Curator of Making Art: Sculpting, the fifth and final in a series of exhibitions at Draíocht (2018-2023) which explores a specific visual art discipline, its materials, processes and varied manifestations in contemporary practice. This exhibition focuses on expanded notions of sculpture from four mid-career Dublin based artists; Bassam Issa, Sibyl Montague, Alice Rekab and Marcel Vidal, spanning sculpture, painting, text and textiles. You can read more about the exhibition here

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Some notes on Sara's practice:
Primarily a commissioner, Sara exhibits a new artist(s) annually, in partnership with a gallery or cultural institution throughout Ireland. Commissions begin with Sara’s ongoing research into analytic philosophy, visual culture and sociology, and is narrowed by her interest in particular artist’s practices. Together, they work collaboratively on the initial conceptualisation of a new body of work. While the artist creates the work, Sara as the curator pitches the work to appropriate institutions and generates a public programme, writing around the work and press. When funding allows, Sara often employs the aid of a recent graduate and/or newly emerging curator. Her 2023 commission features Sara’s first publication and launches this November. The work returns to her initial research into performance art which she began in 2018.

Sara is also a curatorial assistant at IMMA and lives in Stoneybatter with her close friend and fellow writer Jess Kelly.

Photography by: Ishmael Claxton

Alongside an independent curatorial practice, Sara maintains an evolving writing practice. Since 2016 her writing has consisted of catalogue essays and critical texts on visual art for various exhibitions and publications. In 2023, she began personally driven writing, exploring the intersections of Evangelicalism and Western visual culture. Raised in a religious, Protestant, immigrant family, Sara has frequented Romanian speaking Evangelical congregations for over 20 years. Her writing now attempts to draw on her experience of these churches, reflecting on the impact of religion, class and immigration on her own identity and wider visual culture.

Her text for @mirrorlamppress No.7, titled ‘Working class Romanian Pentecostals in Ireland’ examines how Evangelicalism has (1) played out on her and how it may have (2) unwittingly played out on you. Here she references Max Weber’s seminal text “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” which argues that Protestantism provided the cultural and psychological conditions for the development of capitalism in Western Europe and North America. Sara thinks about this text a lot.

Opening this Thursday (17/8) Vera Ryklova curated by Sara Muthi @thedeanartstudio.

‘I’ is a video and sound installation that introduces the work the artist has produced during her time at The Dean Art Studios. This new visual material consists of the artist’s performances to the camera and recordings of specific locations as well as instances of the external world’s own performance the artist witnessed.

Curated and conceptually framed by Sara Muthi, her accompanying text to this work draws parallels between Lacan’s theory of ‘the Mirror Stage’,( i.e. the first time an infant will identify their mirror image and form self-concept, marking symbolic self-recognition and psychological development) and the artist’s performance to camera as a second chance at this pivotal self-identification moment.

@vera.ryklova @saramuthi

Image: Lauryn McNamee, ART SCHOOL FOR ALIENATED ONES* @laur_eire @ncad_dublin Degree Show 2023

“‘The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class' is a book that was lent to me by @brianteeling. It has been the most influential text on my thinking/ life since I read ‘Capitalist Realism’ in 2017. It highlighted to me a phenomena I succumbed to as a poor immigrant child/teenager/ young adult who learned English from watching North American tv shows with my sister. The book highlights the pervasive normative middle-class values and culture that is enforced on working class people. Author Cynthia Cruz argues that working class people are left with a choice between assimilation into middle-class values and culture, leaving our working-class origins behind, or total annihilation.

I’m concerned about the lack of exhibitions I see that broach the topic of class. I’d like to help remedy this, and I don’t know of many other working class curators working in Ireland. A class show is something I’ve pondered for a while, and I think this book is a starting point for me.

Here are some great artists you should be following:

@michelle_malone_
@alicerekab
@brianteeling
@garrett_phelan
@salvatoreoflucan
@careinprogress
@etheartistdublin
@frankawasser

Sara Damaris Muthi, curator & writer

Lately, Sara has been in ongoing conversations with @diaalaganriver discussing themes of mythology, immigration, bureaucracy and religion.

The work in progress in this image is part of an installation portrait featuring all the artist’s residence and pre-residence cards (as Dhiya likes to call them). Drawing on personal experience, Dhiya pulls from an anthology of metaphorical narratives based in mythology and history while simultaneously references a catalogue of socio-political topics in this work and throughout his practice. The work reflects the design, data codes and language that is featured on every residence card. It also references national and European themes - countless repetitive ‘EU’ stamps frame the work, alongside the EU’s 12 gold stars overlaid on the artist's self portrait, and the figure of Europa - the Phoenician princess in Greek mythology of whom Europe was named after. Additional reference is made to labour market sectors and Mediterranean Sea crises.

Questioning reality through Japanese philosopher, literary critic, and political activist Karatani’s ‘Transcritique: On Kant and Marx’ among other influential thinkers, Dhiya is the PhD research scholarship recipient at Lusófona University, Portugal.

Dhiya will be exhibiting his work alongside @basilalrawi @thelabgallery in a two person show titled: Shahid / شَـاهِد (Witness), opening 15 Sept to 4 Dec (with a preview on 14 Sept) curated by @jujubmouss

To hear from Sara about her curatorial practice where she gives additional context to her work visit our gallery instagram highlights here: https://www.instagram.com/drai...