Surviving Only Better:
Velvet flag with pleather snakeskin applique lettering
6 x 8.5ft
2022
“Surviving, Only Better” is comprised of two vertical banners that quote Larry Mitchell’s Faggots and Friends Between Revolutions: “The first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second is that we will win.” The quote is what the strong women tell the faggots about the upcoming revolution, how winning is “like surviving, only better.” The two banners are made of faux black velvet with black snakeskin pleather applique lettering, made with the typeface Ironwood by Joy Reddick.
Featured: Surviving Only Better (see below for more information!)
Notes for Rehearsal:
Offset web printing and laser printed 50 lb white newsprint broadsheet, hole punched, 5 fold. Edition of 1000
4.5 x 10in (folds out to 20x32in)
2024
Notes for Rehearsal is an invitation. It is a book that has a map’s sense of anticipation. When we look at maps, the lines, colors and names morph into ideas of what it would be like to be there. In the present, in the past and the future. Notes for Rehearsal folds out and navigates us through a list of 52 points that explore how rehearsal, a repeated practice in the present, can envision potential futures.
Rehearsal:
digitally printed spandex gloves, animation loop, xerox-printed book.
2024
Rehearsal is a project that creates a stage. At the center of it there is a sample book in which each page is its own world made up by overprinted monochromatic photocopies layered on neon paper to make deep and rich visual environments. Counter to how photocopies are usually made, in this book each page is a unique print. Some pages reveal dark rooms with just a small red piece of color, others have streaks of bright colors bouncing happily over the page. There are smooth wave forms, jagged edges, visible tape residue, entangled ropes that coil like snakes, watery forms, reflective stickers, there is large cursive typography that reads “Camp” and small text hidden in the edges.
In Loving Memory:
Digitally printed tracing paper overlaid digitally printed photographs
7 ft x 12 ft
2023
In Loving Memory is a series of graphite rubbings of fictional memorials, suggesting a future where monuments are raised to commemorate acts of love, touch and the body rather than violence. Each rubbing is paired with archival images found in the Library of Congress digital database of public monuments. These images are digitally manipulated to show the monument out of context, without a central figure it gives the viewer an opportunity to envision what could be in its stead.
Contact is Crisis:
2023
Zine
12 x 18 (fold out to 35.5 x 47.5 in)
Contact is Crisis is a visual take on Ann Carson’s essay “Dirt and Desire” and explores themes of transgression, commitment and transformation. The essay shows how women in ancient Greece were also seen as transgressive. Contemporary philosophers regularly described them as porous, dirty and unmanageable – beings that needed to be contained.
Made using photocopier, risograph, architectural plotter and silk screening so that no part of the process of making the zine could be undone. It has no beginning or an end but a fluid sequence of contorted hands overlaid with edge-to-edge rubbings from riso masters (or as in a later iteration: heat reactive ink), so that the ink stains the reader’s hands and makes them an extension of the publication. The one cut in the split fold zine allows it to fold out to a poster where, in a faint water-like varnish, big letters read out “Contact is Crisis”.
Dies Irae (Day of Wrath):
2022
Embellished pleather jacket, gems, chains, studs
21 x21 in
“Dies Irae” is a heavy studded jacket named after the medieval poem which is Latin for day of wrath. This decorated jacket encapsulates the idea of threat wrapped up in exuberant adornment and plays with the machismo inherent in motorcycle, punk, and metal culture. With a juxtaposition of power and vulnerability, pairing 5-inch spikes, protective charms, chains, and an open back. The protective charms combine stones such as onyx, jet, and tourmaline that help ward off negative energy and small charms reminiscent of those gold charm bracelets worn by young girls. Dies Irae questions what symbols and adornments are read as a treat, protection, superstition, and frivolous.
Bio:
Sara Duell promotes radical and queer political imaginations through graphic design. She makes otherwise commonplace objects such as books, clothing, videos in a way that subverts the norm and creates room for alternative interpretations. Her work has been shown at the Textile Art Center, Wendy’s Subway, and Splashlight Studios.
She just celebrated the fifth anniversary of WMN this spring, an annual publication she co-founded that features historically underrepresented lesbian artists and poets. The project has been awarded the Queen’s Art Fund Grant in 2021 and 2023.
She graduated in 2024 with an MFA in graphic design at Yale University School of Art, where she was awarded the Phelps Berdan Memorial Award and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies Research Award. Sara also has a BFA in communication design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC.
