A Background
Sarah Isela Aguilar (b. El Paso, TX) received her BFA from The University of Texas at El Paso (2019) and her MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago (2024). She currently lives and works in Chicago, and continues to return to the star on the mountain.
Sarah is a
drawer- who traces
drawer- who holdsdrawer- who pullsdrawer- who lengthensA Statement
My practice works through the limits of perception, memory, and knowledge through drawing, photography, writing, and participatory structures. I return to questions of what can be known, what remains out of reach, and how meaning can shift through the movement of translation, place, and time.
A central vein of my practice is how the materials themselves perform these ideas. Burnished graphite, folded surfaces, stereoscopic images, and multilingual texts generate multiple understandings. Darkness and ambiguity are a condition for discovery, my work invites viewers to move through this uncertainty highlighting their own navigation and limitations as a part of the work.
I have developed a visual and conceptual language from the mountainous terrain of a roof, reflections/refractions, fragments, debris, translations, and methods of navigation. I combine these forms to explore how perception is constructed, how memory is continually negotiated, and how fragmented understanding can be a site of connection.