Sarah Svetlana

She Pretended To Know

2021

Sarah Svetlana is a Los Angeles based artist who, as a painter, explores the fragmentation of the subject in an ongoing search for a home. An agency model, turned art model, Svetlana used her body as the first medium in her initial search for identity and self-expression—her upbringing in the irreconcilable cultures of Soviet Belarus and immigrant America, has drawn and painted roadmaps between two worlds. Svetlana's paintings do not only suggest hectic movement, but the stillness locked in each gesture of that movement. Svetlana’s work is rooted somewhere between the insanity of Kandinsky and the line-certainty of the early 20th century Futurists. Each painting is a piece to the complex topography that defines both her identity and her work. Through the narratives created by a methodical application of color, Svetlana delivers an invocation of home—spectral and surreal, but familiar too. Perfection is boring. The colors she chooses, she takes from her childhood. The bright palette and shapes soothe her soul and each line, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is a vital moment, an emotion, suspended in time.