Sarah Margnetti blends the body with architectural elements in comic hybridizations that unsettle notions of gender, sexuality, and domesticity. Her figures move seamlessly through surfaces and change their shape, only revealing themselves in fragmented parts that are depicted in stylistic contrast to meticulously wrought trompe l’oeil’ architectural materials. Shifting intuitively between medium and scale, Margnetti creates murals, textiles, furniture, and architectural interventions that display an array of technical and performative modes while thinning the divide between interiority and exteriority.
Sarah Margnetti (b. 1983, Monthey, Switzerland) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Arts from the Écolecantonale d’art of Lausanne / ECAL and a Master’s in Visual Arts from Geneva University of Art and Design. She also completed a practical training course at the Institut Van der Kelen-Logelain in Brussels, one of the first schools devoted to the study of decorative painting. Selected solo and two-person shows include: Dovetail, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2022); Supportive Structures, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2022-23); Third Ear, Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp | The Forestay Museum of Art, Cully, Switzerland (2022-23); Deux oreilles attentives, Lieu Secret, Mural on patform 2 at Biel/Biennetrain station, Bern, Switzerland (2019); A Glimpse Behind, Mural for the Project Room of La Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France (2019); Flowers Don’t Pick Themselves, Bombon Projects, Barcelona, Spain (2018); Sarah Margnetti starring Kiki Kogelnik SOULLESS SKIN, curated by Elise Lammer and Samuel Leuenberger, Salts, Basel, Switzerland (2017); TROPES, with Charlotte Herzig, Ferme de la Chapelle, Lancy, Geneva, Switzerland (2019); SARAH MARGNETTI & MEGAN ROONEY, Last Tango, Zurich, Switzerland (2019). Selected group shows include: Someone said that the world’s a stage, curated by Margot Samel, Grimm, New York, NY (2021); Le Pays du Soleil, group shop, Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA, Prague, Czech Republic (2020); Digestive Disaster, Lucky Star, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2020). Margnetti has a solo museum exhibition Supportive Structures at Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne on view through April 2023.
