Sarah Malakoff
Personal History
Mar 7 - 30, 2024
For as long as I can remember, I have had a preoccupation with domestic interiors. My long-term photographic project looks at the ways we arrange our most intimate spaces. Our tastes, personalities, quirks and culture are expressed through our décor choices – sometimes intentionally, but often without realizing bits of our most authentic selves have seeped to the surface.
In this body of work, I look closely at objects displayed within American homes that reference history and culture. These items may speak to the ancestral lineage of the occupant, a co-opting of others’ stories, or an aspirational identity. Whether paintings, photographs, or sculptures of historical figures or events, the possessions point to a longing for connection to the past and an engagement with the world at large. Often the collections of objects underscore the privilege and power implicit in the act of collecting. The souvenirs resonate — sometimes humorously, sometimes disturbingly — with the other possessions and architecture that surround them, uneasily vacillating between heroism and kitsch, patriotism and colonialism.
Sarah Malakoff (American, b. 1972, she/her/hers) creates large-scale color photographs that are examinations of the home as both a refuge from and a re-creation of the outside world. She has had solo exhibitions at Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, Camerawork Gallery, Portland, Oregon, The Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, Vermont, the Sol Mednick Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts, and Plane Space, New York, NY. Her photographs have also been shown at The Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA, The NRW Forum in Dusseldorf, Germany, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, and The Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA. She received a 2001 and 2011 Artist’s Fellowship in Photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a 2011 Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Sarah Malakoff: Second Nature was published by Charta Art Books in 2013 and Personal History was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2022. She currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, is an Associate Professor at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and is represented by Anderson Yezerski Gallery.