Sarah Martin-Nuss and the power of water
Contributed by Kun Kyung Sok / “Pouring Water Into Water,” Sarah Martin-Nuss’s first solo exhibition at the Rachel Uffner Gallery, comprises paintings and drawings that immerse viewers in fluid abstract landscapes inspired by marshes she remembers from her youth on Texas’s Gulf Coast. The paintings initially suggest serene swamps, their surfaces reflecting the sky and surrounding features. Deeper scrutiny uncovers two worlds closer by – one above the water paced by reeds swaying in a wet mist, and another below it teeming with aquatic creatures shimmering in the sunlight.
Dubbed post-humanist, Martin-Nuss deconstructs anthropocentrism and nature’s putative hierarchy. Donna Haraway, a prominent post-humanist thinker, argues for the dissolution of boundaries between humans, animals, and machines. Martin-Nuss goes farther, embracing water as an expression of integration through transformation and creation, which seems akin to the Taoist and Zen Buddhist concept of unity between the ego and the outside world.
