It was this time last year that I was happily freezing in Banff, and so looking back fondly, February’s Fridays & Friends feature goes to the talented Sarah Gotowka, a lovely lady I met in the snowy mountains.
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Roselina Hung: How did we first meet?
Sarah Gotowka: We first met at Banff’s winter residency called “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” I remember we sat next to each other in the circle discussion group during the introductory meeting. You were sitting to the right of me and wearing magenta, I think. I remember thinking you had nice skin and that you were super shy.
RH: Tell me a bit about yourself…
SG: Well, I was born in a town called Uijeongbu in South Korea on September 2, 1984. (That makes my sun sign a Virgo, my moon in Sagittarius, with a rising Taurus.) I was adopted when I was three months old to my loving family, the Gotowkas. I am the middle child between two brothers, both who are fraternity jocks that enjoy shooting guns. We grew up in a suburb outside of Rochester (RIP Kodak) in upstate New York. I got my BFA in Fibres at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2007, back when it was a 5-year program, and am currently in my third year at Concordia’s MFA Fibre program in Montreal, Quebec.
RH: Tell me about your work…
SG: I work mostly in textiles and video, but I also write and draw a lot, mostly in sketchbooks and journals as opposed to finished pieces. I really consider myself a weaver, or at least a maker of cloth. To me, cloth is the richest medium because of its inherent history of archiving cultural and historical narratives. I love the idea of stories, myths, symbols, magic, spirits, and identity being embedded into cloth by its maker. Today in Western society we have lost a lot of connection to cloth, where it is made, who it is made by. In a place where everyone is eager to buy the same fashionable leggings from the same fashionable leggings store, colours and symbols no longer (or rarely) exist to communicate the wearer’s belief system or tribal affiliation. Right now, I am using textiles to document narratives of romantic courtship and/or cessation in the 21st Century. I see myself as an anthropologist who is researching/making/collecting these tangible remnants of love in an age of text messaging and Facebook, where the boundaries of intimacy between public and private are completely blurred.
RH: What are you currently working on?
SG: Right now I am working on weaving candid photos of people grinding that I’ve downloaded from random people’s Facebook or Flickr pages. I’ve been reading about how grinding is being banned from high schools and even middle schools all across North America. These images of women bending over and dry humping a man’s groins is so prevalent in our visual culture, we don’t stop and think about how it is shifting our society’s romantic ideals, expectations, and language. Through laboriously weaving these throw-away, only-exists-on-your-computer-
RH: Where can people find your work?
SG: My website saagoto.tumblr.com & my YouTube page.
RH: Tell me one fun fact about yourself.
SG: I have never “ground” in a club with someone, and never will, yet I practice grinding moves while listening to R&B almost every day for a work out.
Thank you, Sarah! <3
If you happen to be in Montreal, you have until the end of today to catch her exhibition at the FOFA Gallery at Concordia University in Montreal, where she is showing How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?, pictured above, which you can read more about here. The title of this exhibition is taken from Prince’s heart wrenching post-break up song. The giant sad face is charged from lamps hanging from the ceiling. They are hooked up to a circuit which turns them off, revealing the glow-in-the-dark-ness of the material.
Please visit saagoto.tumblr.com to view more of Sarah’s work.