Tension / Women’s work

Sarah Bryant uses found objects and fiber yarns to explore Western gender roles, performance, and queering of gender norms. Sarah builds sculptural pieces to question gender-coding of objects and see what becomes of object associations by skewing their function and environment. Fiber arts have historically been viewed as a feminine-coded; soft, “pretty”, and lesser skilled. Femineity or prettiness is also weaponized as a weakness or deficit. Sarah uses traditional crochet techniques and wrapping to cover or decontextualize typically masculine-coded objects. Softening hard things allows Sarah to probe feelings and sensations related to experiences in the real world as a female presenting human at work, at home, and in shared public spaces. Sarah aims to create tension by twisting or reversing accepted functions of objects to play with performative aspects of gender norms in a safe manner, highlight absurdity, neutralize gendered objects, and subtly touch on some elements of violence inherent in the merging of these materials.