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Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Sara Ramo – portrait by Ding Musa
Sara Ramo grew up in a household with a Brazilian mother and a Spanish father, each from radically different backgrounds: two languages, two senses of humor, and two cultures that continually met through their differences. In this binational environment, and in the constant condition of being a foreigner, she learned to navigate life’s contradictions and the coexistence of opposites—elements that surface throughout her artistic trajectory.
Displacement, disjunction, and strangeness hover over the images she creates through the accumulation and collage of elements that permeate material life, often through its debris and traces. Enigmatic, her works reject the dichotomies that rationalize existence, instead articulating the mystery that resides between things.
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
Tempo davalanche, installation, rubble stones and calendar, 2005
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
53th Bienal de Veneza – Fare Mondi // Making World, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Venice, Italy, 2009
Time does not seem to move linearly when we look back at her 25 years of work. Throughout this period, Sara has taken up and abandoned techniques and forms in back-and-forth movements that feed into one another and eventually transform into an obsessive practice of reinvention. In conversation, the artist mentions that Henri Bergson, Karen Barad, and Leda Maria Martins have been constant presences in her reading, especially regarding the heterogeneous nature of time. Sara seems committed to creating not only a symbolic field but also a parallel time in which other stories—mediated by intuition and magic—become possible. She holds to the idea that territories carry memory and that present, past, and future are intertwined, able to be activated and transformed through creation.
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Lindaviejalocabruja – Solo exhibition curated by Manuel Borja Villel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2019
Una y Otra vez, 2019 – Video commissioned by the Museo Reina Sofía for the exhibition Lindalocaviejabruja
Una y Otra vez, 2019 – Video commissioned by the Museo Reina Sofía for the exhibition Lindalocaviejabruja
Una y Otra vez, 2019 – Video commissioned by the Museo Reina Sofía for the exhibition Lindalocaviejabruja
Los trabajos o el juego de la vida, solo show, Travesía Cuatro, Madrid, Spai 2022
Los trabajos o el juego de la vida, solo show, Travesía Cuatro, Madrid, Spain 2022
Los trabajos o el juego de la vida, solo show, Travesía Cuatro, Madrid, Spain 2022
Los trabajos o el juego de la vida, solo show, Travesía Cuatro, Madrid, Spain 2022
Los trabajos o el juego de la vida, solo show, Travesía Cuatro, Madrid, Spain 2022
Sara ramo – Ceia, 2001 Vídeo 12’32s
Sara ramo – Ceia, 2001 Vídeo 12’32s
Sara ramo – Oceano possível, 2002 Vídeo 03’59s
Sara ramo – Oceano possível, 2002 Vídeo 03’59s
Para Marcela e as outras — Solo exhibition curated by Douglas de Freitas, Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017
Para Marcela e as outras — Solo exhibition curated by Douglas de Freitas, Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017
Para Marcela e as outras — Solo exhibition curated by Douglas de Freitas, Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017
Para Marcela e as outras — Solo exhibition curated by Douglas de Freitas, Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017
Para Marcela e as outras — Solo exhibition curated by Douglas de Freitas, Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017
Minhas e suas, 2018-2020, mixed materials
Contradiction is a recurring theme in her work. This multilayered understanding of time creates room for an equally diverse understanding of the world. Such an approach runs parallel to collage—one of the central procedures in her practice, which also becomes a tool for organizing and giving form to this consciousness. The juxtaposition and accumulation of different elements lie at the core of the polymorphic notion she employs in her works. Trained initially as a painter, Sara spent a long period away from the practice due to intoxication caused by excessive exposure to pigments. Collage, always present in her work, took on a leading role as it also became a pictorial material.
The artist understands that objects often operate as mediators between the known and the unknown and are endowed with creative and sacred functions that the commodification of life ultimately diminishes.
In Sara’s work, collage is a form of elaboration. The materials: fabric, cardboard, scraps of boxes, candy wrappers, pieces of plastic bags, gift wrap, and paint. Her most recent production is precisely a painting-collage, in which remnants of paint merge with pictorial forms and cutouts.
Pieces of clothing, cardboard, candy wrappers, elastic bands, books, beads, and even strands of hair: the materials chosen by Sara are often animated by prior histories and possess a “life of their own.” “To animate is to attribute a force, a power, to something—to allow that force to be manifested,” the artist says in an interview. As Ana Ramo, anthropologist and Sara’s sister, points out, her work suspends the concept of utility by understanding material economies beyond the logic of market-driven fetishization, in a hybridization of human and object energies.
In early works, such as the videos Oceano Possível (2002) and Hotel Paradise (2004), the artist’s body appears as an image. When asked about the absence of her own figure in subsequent works, the artist notes that not only does her body remain, but other bodies share the space she creates. Body and object are inseparable and form part of a continuity that interlaces life—whether in the labor embedded in the processes of making things or in the symbolic presence objects occupy in our existence. Moreover, physicality is constantly invoked in her work: through enormous walls that collapse onto shoulders, through cracks revealing what lies behind a wall, or through the balance required to walk among arrangements of ordered objects.
By probing the corners and basements of the spaces she inhabits, Sara celebrates what is hidden and inverted within the systems that govern existence. What is invisible yet sustains appearances comes to the surface: the operational, the feminine, and the domestic—integral parts of the very structures that parade abundance and cleanliness.
Por aqui tudo é novo – Curated by Marta Mestre, Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil, 2016
Por aqui tudo é novo – Curated by Marta Mestre, Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil, 2016
Por aqui tudo é novo – Curated by Marta Mestre, Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil, 2016
Por aqui tudo é novo – Curated by Marta Mestre, Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil, 2016
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Planos de fuga (Installation) – Group exhibition curated by Jochen Volz and Rodrigo Moura, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Uma e outra vez lá, mesmo que aqui – Fortes Vilaça Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil, 2005
Uma e outra vez lá, mesmo que aqui – Fortes Vilaça Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil, 2005
Uma e outra vez lá, mesmo que aqui – Fortes Vilaça Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil, 2005
Uma e outra vez lá, mesmo que aqui – Fortes Vilaça Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil, 2005
A field of tension and memory is made explicit through the artist’s attention to the objects in the attic, symbols of suspended time and repositories of the forgotten. In an unusual gesture, she retrieves discarded objects and uses them to create a garden. This reorganization bursts into Niemeyer’s modernist complex, undoing the illusion of solidity—thus, the artist desecrates the architecture to reveal its hidden layers.
At once strangely familiar and deeply disorienting, O Jardim das Coisas do Sótão [The Garden of Things from the Attic] (2004) forms an inverted mirror with the outside: Burle Marx’s garden. This disobedience, beyond being thematic, is intrinsic to the artist’s method, based on her use of materials and on the way she relates to art and its institutions. Ramo juxtaposes realities within the installation and calls into question the idea of the canon and its power structures.
With the intention of bringing forth this inverted mirror—a side B, the hole in the sock, the discards we insist on overlooking—the artist creates variations and engages with specific contexts and spaces: a gallery, a bathroom, the street, a wall, the kitchen, or the museum.
O Jardim das coisas do sótão — Museu da Pampulha, Bolsa Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2004
O Jardim das coisas do sótão — Museu da Pampulha, Bolsa Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2004
O Jardim das coisas do sótão — Museu da Pampulha, Bolsa Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2004
O Jardim das coisas do sótão — Museu da Pampulha, Bolsa Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2004
O Jardim das coisas do sótão — Museu da Pampulha, Bolsa Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2004
11th Sharjah Biennial – Curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2013
11th Sharjah Biennial – Curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2013
11th Sharjah Biennial – Curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2013
Blind Spot – site-specific installation, EAC, Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, Uruguay
Blind Spot – site-specific installation, EAC, Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, Uruguay
Blind Spot – site-specific installation, EAC, Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, Uruguay
Blind Spot – site-specific installation, EAC, Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, Uruguay
Blind Spot, site-specific installation, EAC – Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, Uruguay
Blind Spot, site-specific installation, EAC – Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, Uruguay
Saba’s Memory Trail or The Composite of Time, Nederlands, 2023
Saba’s Memory Trail or The Composite of Time, Nederlands, 2023
Saba’s Memory Trail or The Composite of Time, Nederlands, 2023
Saba’s Memory Trail or The Composite of Time, Nederlands, 2023
Saba’s Memory Trail or The Composite of Time, Nederlands, 2023
Saba’s Memory Trail or The Composite of Time, Nederlands, 2023
The interdependence between the visible and the invisible—what can or cannot be seen, what is shown or left in invisibility—has been present since the very beginning of her practice. For the artist, shadow and darkness have always been places of connection and possible destinations.
In the video Os Ajudantes, we see a nocturnal landscape where masked creatures wander while playing musical instruments. Immersed in the shadows, they become visible only under the flickering light of the bonfires, appearing and disappearing in a mysterious and unsettling atmosphere. These singular beings, whose figures evoke a human form we never quite grasp, are unknown yet familiar. We form with them an ambiguous relationship, raising a question about the presences that accompany us but that we never truly come to know.
Os ajudantes, 2015 Vídeo 19’26s
Os ajudantes, 2015 Vídeo 19’26s
Os ajudantes, 2015 Vídeo 19’26s
Os ajudantes, 2015 Vídeo 19’26s
Matriz e a perversão da forma– process
Matriz e a perversão da forma– process
Matriz e a perversão da forma– process
Matriz e a perversão da forma– process
Matriz e a perversão da forma– process
Matriz e a perversão da forma, 2015, dental plaster, variable dimensions
Sara Ramo once again turns to the stored and abandoned things of an institution in Desvelo y Traza (2014). The installation, spanning more than 1,000 m², is illuminated by small points of light, and the audience is led to watch a 20-minute video session. Gradually, the retina adjusts to the darkness, and images begin to emerge—the elements can be seen as incomprehensible mirages, ghostly forms onto which the audience projects its own images.
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Desvelo y Traza, Abierto por Obras, Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, Spain
Aparência (Feltro II), 2015
Aparência (Geometria), 2015
