"When you leave, all you take is your memories. And I wanna take mine of you with me” - Lana Del Rey
Sarah De Vos (b.1985) is a Belgian artist, known for her visually engaging work, of almost photographic quality, that explore themes of transformation, reflection, and the interplay between viewer and image. Her inspiration comes from music, and art history, and from the ongoing tension between humanity and nature in their respective creative processes. Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Ancient Greek sculptures, Gerhard Richter and Luc Tuymans intertwine in the universe of Sarah De Vos, as she imprints her own personal touch onto art history.
In her latest album ‘ARK’, Sarah De Vos starts from the three elements that philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist said people need to live a meaningful life: community, connection to nature and a relationship to the sacred or divine through poetry, music, art, religion. The works in the album are a personal reflection on the question of what we carry with us in the ark of our memories, who and what matters.
The paintings come together like pieces of a puzzle, each fragment adding to an exploration of existence—a tribute to the subtle gestures and minute details that infuse life with joy and purpose. They invite the viewer to reflect on their own treasured memories, their personal ‘ARK’. Like Vanitas images of centuries past, De Vos crafts a gentle memento mori through elements like the warmth of a candle, the ripeness of an apple or the delicate branches of a fern. We are brought into contact with our own mortality, our seemingly powerlessness in the face of nature, especially when contemplating the sheer magnitude of the sea. Even the gods, once seen as omnipotent, reveal traces of fragility, echoing our own human limitation.
The painting ‘Gods’, a close-up from the east front of the Parthenon, of Aphrodite (Love) leaning on Gaia (Earth) brings together the three pillars of McGilchrist: togetherness, nature and the divine. Throughout the works, the interplay between human-made and natural elements highlights the tension between human ambition to shape or control nature and nature’s own powerful cycles of creation and destruction. The two children in the album speak to the idea of family and community, but also of humankind’s persistent attempt to master nature. The girl’s action of climbing a tree contrasts with the boy’s almost floating stance above the sand, both suggesting a desire to transcend nature’s bounds. Yet, in each painting, the figures remain ambiguously suspended within the natural world around them.
Sarah De Vos composes an album of existence through seemingly small gestures of everyday life, revealing how reverently we become attached to both people and objects. These connections are weighted with our longing to rise above mortality, and it is perhaps our acute awareness of our own vulnerability that makes us cling to them even more.
Sarah De Vos has had numerous exhibitions throughout Belgium and The Netherlands. Her work has been included in the collections of UPC Duffel, de Nederlandsche Bank, FPS Foreign Affairs, Mu.ZEE and several private collections. Sarah was part of the Biennale of Painting in Deinze and the Triennial of Bruges and published her first monograph in 2021.