Xanax

As many sensitive souls who still have problems with modern constructions such as consumer culture, drug use, police brutality and global terror, Sara Zaher tries to make her contribution to an ideal world where human relations are all that matters. Through desecration or the subversion of familiar paintings, she sends a clear message to our consciousness all too often at the mercy of media, commercials and religion.

This happens in series like 7 Deadly Sins combining digital collage and photo manipulation in order to adjust the original iconography to suit a modern interpretation, or Forever Young, where Sara attempts to age and humanize iconic figures of the 20th and 21st century, like Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse or Kurt Cobain, that have become sanctified within our cultural psyche. By choosing to edit recognizable photographs, the artist intends to maintain the original aspects of the celebrity beneath layers of skin and wrinkles.

“Always striving to question my place within a cultural system that is both foreign and familiar. This feeling of the uncanny, the uncomfortable, is projected in my relentless attempt to question, deconstruct, and reassemble existing social frameworks. This reconstruction usually takes the form of photography, video, and installation art.

But it’s always recreated from the mind’s eye of an eternally, cynical idealist”.

www.sarazaher.com