Sarah Vanhee (BE)

°1980

Sarah Vanhee's artistic practice is linked to performance, visual art and literature. It uses different formats and is often (re)made in situ. Vanhee creates fluid, temporary but well-defined spaces in which she analyses existing paradigms and confronts them with an absurd, utopian or poetic idea. Within the friction that emerges from this, different perspectives, scenarios and discourses present themselves, as well as alternative relations to known systems of meaning-creation and societal functioning. Like a ‘friendly stranger’ and in constant transformation, Vanhee intrudes into a particular world and invites dialogue on unknown grounds.

I Screamed and I Screamed and I Screamed (2013)

installation with video and sound, performance

During the summer of 2013, Sarah Vanhee worked with several inmates at Mechelen prison. She describes this artistic project: ‘For an outsider, the prison building is a warning or a reassurance. The prisoner himself doesn’t have a face. He is reduced to legal matter, to government penal policy. Within the prison walls, there is only space for silent, obedient bodies. I Screamed and I Screamed and I Screamed challenges this silent body, and hence the normalizing society. The sterile anonymity of the prison wall is disturbed by the voices of the prison inhabitants. And centrally, in the midst of it all, stands a screaming body.’

Produced by Contour 2013.