Sarah Margnetti

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.

Having earned degrees in both visual arts (at the Écolecantonale d’art of Lausanne and Geneva University of Art and Design where she earned her master’s degree) and the Institut Van der Kelen-Logelain in Brussels where she completed an intensive program in decorative arts, Margnetti’s technical repertoire is often a point of departure in her work, influencing how she composes and layers elements into an integrated ensemble. That Margnetti enjoys the rigorous process of emulating diverse materials is apparent in the inspiration she finds in their details. Material punctuation divides and unites bodily forms, and makes them cohesive. Her figures are also typically depicted in yellow ochre, a color that adds to their cartoonish appearance, as well as corresponding to the warm tones of the wood, reeds, and bricks, giving these materials added subjectivity.