Bio
Sarah Umles (b. 1986, Germany) is a queer-femme Ashkenazi Jewish artist, independent curator, arts administrator, and collector stewarding Hahamog'na-Tongva tribal land in Los Angeles, California. Sarah's interdisciplinary practice spans installation, digital media, text, performance, relational aesthetics/social sculpture, and experimental curatorial practices. Most notably, her work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (IL), California Museum of Photography (CA), Stove Works (TN), Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center (MA), The Art Center Highland Park (IL), CICA Museum (South Korea), and SAP Space Berlin @ Juxtapose Art Fair (Denmark). Sarah has been awarded residencies with the MOUNT Curatorial Residency at Design Cloud Gallery Chicago, Franconia Sculpture Park, Gracia, Stove Works, BONFIRE, and Soaring Gardens; and she was the recipient of the 2023/24 City of Pasadena Individual Artist Grant.
As an independent curator, Sarah has organized numerous exhibitions in both traditional and alternative contexts across Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. She is the founder and director of The Residency Project—an artist residency and project platform that amplifies historically underrepresented artists and projects at the nexus of art, ecology, identity, and intersectional justice. Sarah holds an MA in Arts Administration & Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Creative Writing with a minor in Film & Visual Culture from the University of California, Riverside.
Portrait of a Lady, 2022, medical grade silicone wrinkle patches on tempered Solexia® glass, aluminum hardware
Artist Statement
As an interdisciplinary conceptual artist, Sarah Umles’s work materializes as multimedia installations of sculpture, sound/video, text, and photography; performances and rituals rooted in ancestral and intuitive practices; and relational artworks. Through intimate narrative, critical inquiry, and the confrontation of hushed subjects, she explores themes of loss, grief, legacy, memory, resilience, and repair—on a deeply personal level, at the scale of global ecological collapse, and in terms of the oppressive systems we function within and against. At large, she is interested in how social-cultural identity and self-knowing are constructed through our relationships with material culture, visual media, nature, and technology. Umles is drawn to the unexpected moments of absurdity that we stumble upon in our technology-laden lives, particularly when the digital tools we’re so heavily reliant upon inevitably falter or fail. As such, her work often stems from the “algorithmic oddities, accidental abstractions, glitches, and slippages” that occur in the built environments we inhabit every day. Using found media, screenshots, and readymades in addition to performance, text, and photography, Umles examines how our screen-mediated experiences inform (and deform) our senses of self and our understandings of the world around us. With Umles’s background in creative writing, language plays an essential role in her practice. Words—their roots, shapes, sounds, and multitudinous meanings—serve as pieces of poetic armature; structural foundations for the visual components of her work.
CV
b. 1986, Germany
lives and works in Pasadena, CA
Education
2012 MA Arts Administration & Policy - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2008 BA Creative Writing - University of California, Riverside
Site-Specific Performances/Installations
2025 mother\nature, LA Climate Week
2024 Patch, virtual installation, GRIEF GARDEN by tomorrow soup, grief.garden (ongoing)
2022 Table for 3, performance, MOTOR
2021 Subtext, installation, Franconia Sculpture Park
2021 Wear Pattern, performance, Franconia Sculpture Park
2021 Patch, installation and performance, Franconia Sculpture Park
2021 Waiting for Hello, video installation, Franconia Commons
2020 Distillate, video installation, The Residency Project
2017 Crystal Lucida, installation, California Institute of the Arts, Santa Clarita, CA
2017 Crystal Lucida, installation, BoldPas, Old Pasadena Management District, Pasadena, CA
Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions
2024 Unearthed, Supplyframe DesignLab, Pasadena, CA
2024 Errata, Gallery 787, Pasadena, CA
2023 Lull, works by Jenn Sova & Sarah Umles, 1122 Gallery, Portland, OR
Select Group Exhibitions
2025 grass and earth : ash and thorn, SAP Space at Juxtapose Art Fair, Aarhus, Denmark
2024 At the Intersections, LA Climate Week Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2024 Songs, Sounds, & Poems, curated by raya marie hazell, The Residency Project, Pasadena, CA
2023 Absurdity: In Dada We Trust, The Art Center Highland Park, IL
2023 Nature, CICA Museum, Gimpo-si, South Korea
2023 Birds of a Feather, curated by Raquel Mullins, Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN
2023 Out of Hand: Tradition Meets Tech, curated by Fabiola Delgado, Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center, Solomons, MD
2022 Textures, Shapes, Patterns and Forms, curated by Lori McBride, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2022 ART-IN-PLACE, CNL Projects and Terrain Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA
2021 biennale.NO: The unbearable lightness of internet, Noemata
2011 Without You I’m Nothing: Interactions, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
2008 Eclectic People, California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA
Select Curatorial Projects
2024 Inside a Red Home and After as Trees: raya marie hazell, The Residency Project, Pasadena, CA
2023 Liquid Matter, The Residency Project, co-curated with David Badesch, Pasadena, CA
2021 Terrain Biennial: Keeping in Touch, Mirage by Nora Maité Nieves, The Residency Project
2021 Interstice, Minneapolis, MN and Los Angeles, CA
2021 Behind the Mask, Angels Gate Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
2020–2021 Interpretation Board, 200 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena, CA
2020 EMERGE: Lerer Chen, The Residency Project, Pasadena, CA
2018 Select Works from the Private Collection, The Residency Project, Pasadena, CA
2018 Intuitive Trainings: Selected Works by Veronica Bruce, The Shudio, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2013 Revisiting Undomesticated, Design Cloud Gallery, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2013 CONCEAL/REVEAL, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2013 Amulets and Heirlooms, 2nd Floor Rear, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2012 Vitrine, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2012 Cross Sections, West Town Street Lab, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2012 Prescribed Meanings, 2nd Floor Rear, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2011 Undomesticated, Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, Casa Duno, Chicago, IL
2010 hypridentities, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, co-curated with Anqi Chen, Chicago, IL
Awards & Residencies
2023/2024 City of Pasadena Individual Artist Grant – Pasadena, California
2023 TOTAL LANDSCAPING, Active Cultures & X-TRA – Los Angeles, California
2022 BONFIRE – “THE GLITCH” Residency
2022 Stove Works – Chattanooga, Tennessee
2022 Gracia – Antigua, Guatemala
2021 Franconia Sculpture Park – Shafer, Minnesota
Administration
2018–2025 Founder & Director - The Residency Project
2016–2020 Academic Affairs Manager - California Institute of the Arts
2011–2016 Administrative Director - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2009–2010 Registrar - Louis Stern Fine Arts
2008–2009 Administrative Assistant - Long Beach Museum of Art
2007–2008 Digital Lab Intern - California Museum of Photography
2007 Assistant Editor, ChildArt Magazine - International Child Art Foundation
Publications
Negotiating the In-Between: Strategic Plan for a Mission-Driven Arts For-Profit. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 2012. (author, credited)
FIRST catalog. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 2011–2016 editions. (editor, uncredited)
Alfredo Ramos Martinez & Modernismo. Louis Stern Fine Arts. 2009. (assistant registrar, credited)
ChildArt Magazine, Jan–Mar 2008 Volume 11, Issue 1, Number 37. International Child Art Foundation. (assistant editor/contributing writing, credited)
Mosaic Art & Literary Journal. University of California, Riverside. (cover artist, credited)