About

BIO

Sabina Rak lives and works in Montreal. She recently obtained a Master's degree in Print Media at Concordia University. She also holds a B.A. in Art History from McGill University, an M.A. in Art History and a BFA (Studio Arts) both from Concordia University. Beside her career as a visual artist, she has worked in Communications within various art institutions, and is currently both teaching art in a primary school and a teaching and learning consultant for an undergraduate course at Concordia University, Faculty of Fine Arts.

ARTISAN STATEMENT

My work engages with productivity, exchange, value, and the material conditions of our existence. It follows the following ethical principles: must not be more than 10% new material; must be easily mended/repaired, or modified according to the resources available; must be worth nothing in terms of material value. I identify with DIY movements: at the opposition of technologically assisted art, I prefer hand labour and imperfections; to counter art as product, my materials are ignoble.

As research-creation based on collaborations:

• I am interested in human connections, deconstructing patterns, metaphorical interactions, power relations, labour as existence, absurd meanings, futile explanations.
• I employ the artistic tools of curiosity, repetition, patience, impatience, questions, impositions,
superposition, association, humour, absurdity. I enjoy both the doing and the undoing.
• Each piece is the site of various collaborations : sometimes named, but mostly hard to pinpoint as conversations, current events, and personal feelings mixed into the concept and the making.

As research-creation based on exchange:

• I thrive in joyful, discussion-driven spaces—where exchanges take shape around my labour. My work grows through encounter, not competition. I choose the joy of sharing over the performance of achievement. 
• To remain consistent between what I make and how I share it, I am choosing to produce outside urgency, to show work without submitting it to comparison, to privilege gestures of relation over systems of evaluation.