When Heartstrings Collapse
This series explores the cross-over between physical and emotional associa-tions. Glitches, which appeared through the artist’s photographic process through the microscope, became adopted to describe the relationship one has to their own internal body - inherently unfamiliar. They behave as vulnerabilities in the technology’s anatomy, abstractly exposing themselves. Likewise, although internal workings aren’t typically seen, human emotions do physically manifest them-selves through involuntary malfunctions, like a stream of sweat down the forehead from anxiety, cheeks turning red from embarrassment, or a choke when lost for words.
When Heartstrings Collapse adopts physical manifestations of emotions as image titles, like Tremble, Sweat, Choke, Twitch, Palpitate and Blush.
Rose Tinted
Rose Tinted investigates the notion of perception and how it’s shaped through expectation.
The sculptured landscapes are shaped using standardized forms- generalised depictions of utopic scenes. Their ideal elements are shaped through rose tinted glasses, outlining forms such as a palm tree, a beach, a city scape, a sunset. The element’s photographic depictions, however, do not match. The shaped plexiglass and photograph’s misalignment stems from the contrast between the ideal and real, or the perception of something and its reality.
Building Blocks
“Building Blocks extends the artist’s preoccupation with micro images and dichotomies between proximity and distance, into an examination of memory and cognitive associations. This series maps the cellular make up of three elements nostalgic to the artist: jasmine, soil and Aleppo soap. Triggers of olfactory memories sourced from Sara’s native Syria, the protagonists of her latest body of work awaken thoughts of things and places she associates with the realm of the familiar, yet also perceives as foreign.
Using a Scanning Electron Microscope, Sara captures the cellular structure of each sample, magnifies it, and reveals its complexity through screengrabs then mounted on wood and plexiglass. The large-scale renditions include deliberate glitches such as formal distortions, light leaks or reticle crosslines—interferences that further abstract the works and hint at the imperfection of memory and nostalgia.” Coline Miliard
Dialects of the Body
Dialects of the Body explores the human body’s sinuous division of interiority and exteriority. Silent Scream mutedly records the artist screaming for as long and as loud as possible, with a breath in between, until reaching the brink of her own body. This performative vide aims to test the boundaries of Sara Naim’s body, which is contrasted against the RBG tone of her own blood, marked through a red square adjacent to the video projection. Painted to th average size of the human face, the notion of expectation and realization are at play.
Video work Kul Shay Imkassr Lazim Embellash Min Jadeed recites a phrase that was echoed in early demonstrations across Syria, which translates to ‘Everything is broken, w must begin again’. As the mantra continues, the artist begins to repeat it incorrectly. The repetition offers distancing rather than familiarization, where the phrase becomes abstrac and meaningless over time. The video indicates towards the performative nature of broadcasted news, which is voiced through its old domestic TV screen installation, where tragic events are often heard or unheard.
Reaction
Reaction consists of expired polaroid film that has been exposed to light, dissected, scanned at high resolution, and formed as sculptural photographs. Although chemical reactions are predictable and precise, the resulting microcosms of reactions in Naim’s series are precarious, or glitched, due to the Polaroid’s expiration. The constant magnification and examination of the film becomes a dichotomy to the polaroid’s original instantaneous way of image making.
The photograph’s rim mimics the content within the image as a way to free the works of their internal and external tensions. Enlarging chemical reactions to embody their own shape, and reducing lines between the micro and macro, aims to play with scale as an interchangeable aspect.
