Picture a row of small seedlings, sprouting out of coarse, damp soil. Green, sprightly, each with one leaf, maybe two—a series of new beginnings, every one unique. A seedling needs care and attention, but also space; sun; and freedom. This exhibition presents new work by Sara Mejia Kriendler that contemplates humans’ pervasively anthropocentric worldview by offering alternative ways of relating to the earth. Featuring sculptural objects and wall-based weavings made using seeds, fibers, and clay, Seedlings considers what would happen if we embraced the vulnerability of nature rather than exploiting it. Following her 2022 exhibition at PROXYCO, Mother’s Milk, this presentation marks a turning point for Kriendler, extending notions of maternal care and nourishment into wholly new territory through the artist’s slow, tender approach to working with organic materials.
The first room features a work which gives the exhibition its name. Seedlings (2024) comprises rows of boxes hung on the walls, each containing numerous found seeds wrapped individually in paper and golden thread. Building upon experiments begun in 2022, Kriendler’s turn away from the “human landscape” to the natural aligns with a personal move from the city to an area with more open, green space, which reawakened early sources of inspiration, such as a summer spent researching the metamorphosis of a rare species of moth in the forests of Costa Rica. It comes as no surprise, then, that the bundles that form Seedlings bear a formal resemblance to cocoons. However, instead of caterpillars, they house seeds; pregnant with a similar energy, these sites of potential require intervention to realize it, such as a human planting them in the ground. In another nod to this potentiality, Kriendler wraps each bundle loosely, as if they could unravel at the slightest touch, their contents free to burst forth. Vibrating in the dialectical balance “between wilderness and control,” Seedlings suggests a way of working with, rather than against, nature.
Gold is a key motif in Seedlings as well as By a Thread (2024), a series of delicate wire weavings on view in the next room. In this way, this presentation expands upon Kriendler’s past interrogations of the story of El Dorado, exploring how horrendous violence and cultural erasure emerged from colonizers’ and Indigenous peoples’ clashing views of gold’s value. To create the By a Thread works, Kriendler took inspiration from traditional Colombian weaving crafts, including basket making, but embraced her amateur skill level, reveling in and retaining improvisation, a gesture towards the metaphorical power of the material. The patterns in By a Thread thus celebrate the wild, magical qualities of gold, asserting the material as malleable but not quite controllable, seemingly in protest of its exploitation.
While this exhibition may feature new techniques for Kriendler, her inspirations are anything but. Seedlings and By a Thread draw on traditional ways of weaving with fiber and other materials, and Earthenware (2024) uses natural, unglazed clay. Earthenware comprises hundreds of individual vessels inspired by the form of the earthen lamp, made by hand and used during Diwali celebrations. Arranged in a circular, ceremonial form, the installation ruminates not just on ancient ways of creating ceramics—literally firing clay over a hearth, without a kiln—but also the many critical functions a bowl of this size might have, as a tool for making or storing food or performing significant rituals. Spirituality and devotion play a role across Kriendler’s work, even manifesting in her techniques, wherein repetition becomes its own kind of devotional practice.
What would happen if we all devoted ourselves to the earth? This and other questions spurred by Seedlings about our collective relationship with the earth bear an increasing urgency in the face of climate change. Against this backdrop, the seeds and strings of Seedlings, which both have endless potential, might appear as part of a low-tech, post-apocalyptic survival kit. Meanwhile, Earthenware, with its quiet, undulating spiral, might serve as a call to action to revisit, rather than eschew, ancient technologies. At once cautionary and meditative, Seedlings centers Mother Earth, asking us to steward each of her seedlings—ourselves included.
— Emily Markert
BIOGRAPHY
Sara Mejía Kriendler (b. 1983, NY, NY) is a Colombian-American artist. She studied Intellectual History at the University of Pennsylvania, trained as a sculptor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and received her MFA in Fine Arts from SVA. Her solo exhibitions include “Field Notes” at the Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, NY (2023), “Mother’s Milk” at PROXYCO Gallery, NY, NY (2021), “Sangre y Sol” at The Chimney, Brooklyn, NY (2019), "In Back of Beyond" at Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY (2018), "El Ocaso de Los Idolos" at Pereira Museum of Fine Art, Pereira, Colombia (2018), "Duplicates, Dummies & Dolls" at CP Projects Space, NY, NY (2016), "The Anthropocene" at A.I.R. Gallery, NY, NY (2015) and "In Arbeit - Six Memos for the Next...", at Magazin 4, Bregenz, Austria (2013). She has also participated in group exhibitions at La Cometa in Bogota, Colombia, The Americas Society, NADA x Foreland, El Museo del Barrio, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, 601 Artspace, Interstate Projects, and The Invisible Dog, in New York, Halt Gallery in Phoenix, and Works on Paper in Philadelphia. Her exhibition “Sangre y Sol” at the Chimney was featured in The New York Times Spring Guide. Her work has also been featured in Whitewall, Artnet News, Newsday, and Hyperallergic.