Sara Cwynar
Sara CWYNAR (1985, Canada) is a designer, artist and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. She studied English Literature at the University of British Columbia, Design at York University and holds an MFA from Yale University. Cwynar is interested in how design and popular images work on our psyches in how visual strategies infiltrate our consciousness. Her work in photography, video and installation involves a constant archiving and re-presentation of collected visual materials. She considers how familiar, often sentimental images smooth over unpleasant realities to cover up “the systems of control embedded within our social, economic and political lives.” Cwynar has held solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. Her first films, Soft Film (2016) and Rose Gold (2017), both screened at IFFR 2018, where the latter was rewarded with a Tiger Short Award. In 2019, she returned to Rotterdam with the European premiere of Red Film (2018), which won the Tiger Short Award. Glass Life (2021), a world premiere at IFFR 2022, was part of the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition. In 2024 and 2025, she will present new solo exhibitions at 52 Walker in New York and ICA Boston.
Filmography
(all short) Soft Film (2016), Rose Gold (2017), Red Film (2018), Glass Life (2021), Baby Blue Benzo (2024)
More info: Sara Cwynar
Wikipedia, Sara Cwynar
Sara Cwynar op IFFR
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Baby Blue Benzo
Sara Cwynar | 22' | USA | World premiere (festival)
The image offers the promise of liberation through attained desire but also ensnares us. -
Glass Life
Sara Cwynar | 19' | USA | None
Available on Festival Scope Pro from 26 January 9:00 CET to 14 February 9:00 CET -
Red Film
Sara Cwynar | 13' | USA | World premiere (festival)
A dizzying array of colours, textures and literary quotations point to the perfidious capitalist pressures on women to conform and consume. -
Rose Gold
Sara Cwynar | 8' | USA | European premiere
Richly layered, Rose Gold focuses on Apple’s Rose Gold iPhone, tracking how the phone acts as a talisman of desire for objects, people, power, and… -
Soft Film
Sara Cwynar | 8' | USA | None
In Soft Film, the artist collects, arranges and archives her eBay purchases of dated objects according to a logic based upon colour, material, vintage -
Glass Life
19' | USA | -
A dizzying navigation through the chaos of our consumerist visual world brings us face to face with our complex relationship with images.