“SRI SERIE” Drawing as Poetic Performance Solo Show by Agung Kurniawan
December 26, 2024
Low
Sarah Mosca
Exhibition
Repurposing: Paradise
Artist
Sarah Mosca
Written by
Krisna Sudharma
“Low” is positioned as both homage to and critique of the pursuit of man-made beauty.
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Through her photo-sculpture, Mosca interprets the Cascata delle Marmore—a waterfall engineered by ancient Romans and reflects on the human desire to create the sublime. This piece extends the conversation to the tourist transformation of Bali, paralleling how natural and cultural scopes are intricately shaped to match aesthetic desires and commercial expectations.
Mosca contrasts the Marmore Falls with the island of Bali, within the context of the exhibition. Emerges as a quintessential example of a fabricated paradise. This once tranquil island has been meticulously moulded into a tourist mecca, simulating an idyllic paradise that caters to an international audience seeking escape and exoticism. Mosca’s work exploring how its cultural and natural elements have been repurposed and commodified. The island’s transformation is presented not only as an act of physical reshaping but also as a reimagining of its identity – from a sacred landscape to a consumable product.
Whether it be the majestic waterfalls of the Marmore Falls or the tropical allure of Bali, Mosca identifies the presence of a mirage. This mirage is overshadowed by the daily overlooked banality in the act of repurposing entities into something beyond their original nature. Through Mosca’s interpretation, the photo-sculpture quietly echoes these sentiments, critiquing the journey in pursuit of man-made perfection and its inevitable erosion back to dust.
At the heart of Mosca’s artistic exploration lies a fascination with the narratives of epic human pursuits and the construction of false histories—themes that reverberate through “Low.” This fascination is deeply rooted in Mosca’s personal connection to the Abruzzo region of Italy, where the artist traces familial origins and where the nearby Apennines Mountains beckoned her towards exploratory walks. These walks, emblematic of Mosca’s durational gestures, are meticulously recorded through photography, capturing the essence of her interaction with the landscape and the historical sediment it carries.
Transcending the boundaries of traditional art mediums, Mosca fluidly navigates between photography, film, sculpture, and research, re-presenting historical narratives to uncover readings and truths often consigned to oblivion. With a primary focus on photography, she critically assesses and challenges the medium’s conventional documentary role. By adopting alternative analog photographic processes and delving into the physicality of materials, she crafts a distinctive visual language that is both investigative and revelatory. This methodological approach enables her to dissect and reinterpret historical and literary canons, embarking on field expeditions that are less about documentation and more about excavation—prodding, probing, and peeling back layers to expose underlying threads of truth within the historical landscape.
Though “Low” intends to critique the construction of false paradises, it also invites varied interpretations from its audience, encouraging contemplation on the dialectics of the natural and the artificial, the grand and the mundane, and the authentic and the replicated. It embodies Mosca’s pursuit of uncovering the veiled stories of human engagement with the environment, rendering visible the confluence of personal history, cultural memory, and ultimately pondering the lasting impact of our constructed paradises on both the ecosystems and their historical significances.
