Sarah Trad: What Still Remains Gallery Guide

Abir, Forever, 2021, single-channel video (still detail)

GA LLERY GU IDE FEBRUARY 1 8 —J U NE 5, 2022

Clench My Fists, 2020, single-channel video (still detail)

INTRODUCTION As a Lebanese American artist living in Philadelphia, Sarah Trad explores complex themes of personal and cultural identity through film-based media and textiles. Her single and multi-channel videos appropriate and manipulate scenes from popular movies, music videos, and television, drawing on sources based in the rich film tradition of the SWANA* region. What Still Remains features new and recent work including Trad’s single-channel videos, How I Met My Grandfather and Clench My Fists, which examine the generational divide between herself and her grandfather whose death became a familial catalyst for years of inherited trauma, mental illness, and disconnect with her Arab identity.

The artist also debuts Abir, Forever, and several textile and video installations that investigate memory, personal identity, and the absence of Arab-American representation in popular media.

— Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of Exhibitions *South West Asian / North African

How I Met My Grandfather, 2021, single-channel video (still detail)

ARTIST STATEMENT What Still Remains is a body of work which explores pop culture viewership in the diaspora, adolescence and queerness, and the remnants of memory, family, and lineage.

As an Arab American obsessed with media, I think a lot about the concept of representation. I focus more on the complexities of the relationship between materials and how audiences identify them, rather than who is being represented on screen.

For a queer femme viewer in the SWANA diaspora, viewership is complicated. Imposter syndrome can be overwhelming and it can feel isolating trying to find media that reflects one’s own personal experience. I created a body of work around what I thought new narratives might look like, creating various moving image self-portraits that better reflect myself.

To paraphrase digital media scholar Carolyn Guertin, filmic materials taken and recontextualized to create new meanings is a part of “talking back” to pop culture, making critique a natural

part of the process of viewership. Growing up immersed in Windows 98 LOTR1 fanfiction sites, KaZaA2 and early Tumblr, recreating new narratives from original material was a part of my adolescence. The fiber installations in this body of work are intended to immerse the gallery space further into a playful and colorful feeling of adolescent girl fandom. Inspired by the pattern design and wool felting practices of the SWANA region, I felted designs from Turkish ceramics and Moroccan rugs that mirrored doodles I might have found in my pre-teen diaries.

The moving image portraits are a reflection of intergenerational family trauma. As someone who struggles with depression and anxiety and whose family has a history of mental illness, my art examines the idea of “inherited grief.” Through biological or behavioral means, trauma is passed down through generations so that family members might experience the residual effects of trauma they did not personally witness.

By focusing on identity and lineage, my work explores how the death of my Lebanese grandfather caused ripples of mental illness and skewed racial identity through my paternal family. I also examine the imperfect nature of memory, as my paternal grandmother’s recent passing and deterioration due to dementia revealed inconsistencies in her own memory of family history and emphasized the importance of my need to archive what was left.

The found footage, glitch, and post production processes take on several meanings in this body of work. Found footage is used to safeguard family and self when discussing emotionally raw topics, and to fill in aspects of memory that are unclear or lost. It disrupts the narrative, often of people trying to connect, reflecting on the difficulties of relationships for people with mental health concerns. Glitch alters the image on screen, disrupting viewership and emphasizing my place as an additional collaborator, reflecting my own experience as viewer and the questioning of my authenticity as both Arab and author.

Lastly, to quote Legacy Russell3 “glitch becomes a catalyst, opening up new pathways, allowing us to seize on new directions…[Glitch] helps us to celebrate failure as a generative force, a new way to take on the world.” Thus glitch serves as an empowering disruption and reclamation of what is given, breaking the original narrative to create infinite new queer futures.

My work oscillates between past, present, and future, inside and outside of established realities of time and history. I am using the found, what is passed down, to mold new optimistic possibilities and reflect on what has come before and what still remains.

— Sarah Trad

1. The Lord of the Rings epic fantasy series 2. A discontinued peer-to-peer file sharing application commonly used to exchange MP3 music files and other file types over the Internet 3. Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (New York: Verso Books, 2020.)

ABIR, FOREVER, 2021 single-channel found footage video (16 min) CLENCH MY FISTS, 2020 single-channel found footage video (5 min 49 sec) HOW I MET MY GRANDFATHER, 2021 single-channel found footage video (5 min 32 sec) ROUHI, 2022 multimedia installation textile and found footage video (16 min 35 sec) SPIRAL, 2022 multimedia installation textile and found footage video (7 min 48 sec) SUNDOWNING, 2022 multimedia installation textile and found footage video (4 min 34 sec) UNTITLED, 2022 multimedia installation textile and found footage video (1 min) All works Courtesy of the Artist

SARAH TRAD (b. 1989, Troy, New York) is a Philadelphia-based artist. Working in fibers, video, and computer art, she focuses on themes of how Arab identity intersects with queerness, mental health, feminism, memory, and future alternate realities.

She is a former member of the artist-run gallery, Little Berlin, and is currently a programmer for the MENA Film Festival in Vancouver, Canada. Trad has participated in the 2019 77Art Artist Residency, Rutland, VT; the 2019 Plyspace Residency and Fellowship, Muncie Council for Arts and Culture, IN; and is the recipient of 2011 Carol N. Schmuckler Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film, Syracuse, NY. Trad’s work has been screened at the Arab Film Festival, MENA Film Festival, Antimatter Media Art Festival, Rendezvous With Madness Festival, SuperNova Digital Animation Festival, Everson Museum of Art, and Currents New Media.

RELATED PROGRAMMING

VIRTUAL ARTIST TALK WITH SARAH TRAD Wednesday, March 16, 2022, 6pm Zoom: Visit our Website to Register

The artist speaks about her exhibition, What Still Remains, which explores complex themes of personal and cultural identity through film-based media and textiles. Trad discusses her creative process in which she appropriates and reconfigures scenes from popular films using effects such as rotoscope and glitch video.

FAMILY ART SATURDAY

Saturday, May 28, 2022, 11am – 1pm BCA Center, Fourth Floor Get creative and make art together! Families can drop-in at the BCA Center in-person and enjoy an art activity inspired by Sarah Trad’s video and textile installations.

Sarah Trad: What Still Remains is sponsored in part by

THE MASLOW FAMILY FOUNDATION

Hospitality sponsor, Lake Champlain Chocolates. Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, part of the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, an initiative of the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with major funding from the federal CARES Act from the National Endowment for The Arts, and by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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