Exhibitions
SARAH ELIZABETH CORNEJO: THE SCARCITY OF SAND
Clough-Hanson Gallery (Rhodes College) / 2000 N Pkwy. September 5 - November 1st (Reception: September 5 5:00pm - 7:00pm)
Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo
The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind, and yet I find myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees. - Octavia Butler
The Scarcity of Sand grapples with the intangibility yet universality of grief and its effect on human behavior. These works explore a living grief of contending with our own mortality - questioning how a person chooses to act in the present in response to faith and fear. Leaning on Pre-Columbian Latin-American mythologies around the serpent and afterlife, The Scarcity of Sand asks if the balk of our species at non-existence has caused a susto that has scared the soul from our bodies, leaving us nihilistic and violent, and offers moments of abyss and dogged rootedness in a troubled present that is worth saving.
Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo is an interdisciplinary artist based in Memphis, TN. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at The Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC), Duke University (Durham, NC), Field Projects (New York, NY), the Hilliard Museum (Lafayette, LA) and the 2023 statewide Tennessee Triennial, with solo exhibitions at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles, CA), Antenna (New Orleans, LA), Davidson College (Davidson, NC), and Crosstown Arts (Memphis, TN). She has been awarded residencies at the McColl Center, Crosstown Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Hambidge Center. In 2022 she was awarded the Tennessee State Fellowship and was the finalist for the 2022 Southern Prize. She received her MFA in interdisciplinary studio from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her BA in Studio Art and English Literature from Davidson College.
