Sascha Braunig

Sascha Braunig devotes her critical focus to the capaciousness and limitations of the feminine form under duress. Braunig’s figures teeter towards overextension—waists are pinched to extremity; appendages are restricted or decked in barbs; phantom silhouettes sinuously negotiate and adapt to the contours of their technicolor environments. Drawing on feminist artistic discourse, Braunig’s imaginaries engage the ways that gender performance and systems of power are replicated. Training, fitting, and reinforcement are recurring motifs in the severe and sometimes sinister crucibles which Braunig’s figures endure. Cast in vibrant complementary palettes and anchored through Braunig’s graphic, tensile formal vocabulary, her images recapitulate and usurp foundational codes of gendered visuality to create surreal and unequivocally emblematic scenes.

Sascha Braunig (b. 1983, Qualicum Beach, BC, Canada) lives and works in Portland, Maine. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA in painting from Yale University. Braunig was awarded a residency from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2016, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award in 2016, and a Macdowell Fellowship in 2013. Selected solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, New York and Los Angeles, USA; Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada; Magenta Plains, New York, USA; Office Baroque, Brussels, Belgium; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, USA; and MoMA PS1, New York, USA. Her work has been featured in institutional exhibitions including the Quebec City Biennial; Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, USA; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, USA; and the New Museum Triennial, New York, USA.