Sarah Sze facts for kids

Sarah Sze (/ˈziː/; born 1969) is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums. Sze's work explores the role of technology and information in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze's work often represents objects caught in suspension.

Early life and education

Sze was born in Boston in 1969. Her father, Chia-Ming Sze, was an architect who moved to the United States from Shanghai at age four and her mother, Judy Mossman, was an Anglo-Scottish-Irish schoolteacher. Sze reports that as a child she would draw constantly. She attended Milton Academy as a day student and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Architecture and Painting from Yale University in 1991.

Career

Sze's work has been featured in The Whitney Biennial (2000), the Carnegie International (1999) and several international biennials, including Berlin (1998), Guangzhou (2015), Liverpool (2008), Lyon (2009), São Paulo (2002), and Venice (1999, 2013, and 2015).

Sze has created public artworks for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Walker Art Center, and the High Line in New York.

Sze is a 2003 MacArthur Fellow and was granted a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award in 1999.

Work

In 2013, Sze represented the United States at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition called Triple Point.

On January 1, 2017, a permanent installation commissioned by MTA Arts & Design of drawings by Sze on ceramic tiles opened in the 96th Street subway station on the new Second Avenue Subway line in New York City.

In 2020, Sze unveiled Shorter than the Day, a permanent installation, in LaGuardia Airport

In 2021, Sze unveiled her most recent permanent installation, Fallen Sky, at Storm King Art Center, Cornwall, New York.

For her 2023 exhibition called Timelapse at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Sze created a series of site-specific installations through the Frank Lloyd Wright building.

In 2023, Sze transformed a large Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye Station in London into an immersive installation called The Waiting Room.

In 2023, Sze was featured in Art21's New York Closeup Series.

Personal life

Sze has one brother, the venture capitalist David Sze. Sze lives in New York City with her husband Siddhartha Mukherjee and their two daughters. Sze’s great-grandfather, Alfred Sao-ke Sze, was the first Chinese student to go to Cornell University. He was China’s minister to Britain and later ambassador to the United States. Her grandfather is Szeming Sze who was the initiator of World Health Organization.

Process

Sze draws from Modernist traditions of the found object, to build large scale installations. She uses everyday items like string, Q-tips, photographs, and wire to create complex constellations whose forms change with the viewer's interaction. The effect of this is to "challenge the very material of sculpture, the very constitution of sculpture, as a solid form that has to do with finite geometric constitutions, shapes, and content."

When selecting materials, Sze focuses on the exploration of value acquisition–what value the object holds and how it is acquired. In an interview with curator Okwui Enwezor, Sze explained that during her conceptualization process, she will "choreograph the experience to create an ebb and flow of information [...] thinking about how people approach, slow down, stop, perceive [her art]."

Exhibitions

Sze has staged a large number of solo exhibitions and shows across the United States and internationally. Her notable solo exhibitions include White Room (1997), White Columns, New York; Sarah Sze (1999), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Sarah Sze: The Triple Point of Water (2003-2004), originating at the Whitney Museum, New York; Triple Point (2013), American pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale; and Sarah Sze: Timelapse (2023), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Sze has also participated in a wide array of group exhibitions, including the Berlin Biennale (1998); 48th and 56th Venice Biennale (1999, 2015); Whitney Biennial (2000); and Liverpool Biennial (2008).

Notable works in public collections

Awards and grants

• 2022 - Asia Arts Game Change Award
• 2020 - Inductee, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2018 – The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York
• 2013 – US Representative for the Venice Biennale