‘If silence is golden, Dutch artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck is a bank’ says Nicola Bozzi. ‘Her work, ranging across all sorts of media, is always infused with an attention for space, and heritage of her years as an architecture student. It deals with the immaterial, but also with chance. If silence is a place of intimacy, the accidents that break it are meaningful, chaotic events storming their way into our world. Sound – or lack thereof – is then only one of the dimensions of her installations, consisting primarily in a fragile and intimate experience to cherish and keep to ourselves.’
Sarah van Sonsbeeck’s work is two-sided: on the one hand, she tries to define, defend and extend private space; on the other, she simultaneously reveals the impossibility and perhaps even undesirability of being completely shut off from the world. A case in point is when she tried to contain one cubic meter of silence on the as yet undeveloped plot of land around Museum De Paviljoens in the rapidly developing new town of Almere. One night the reinforced glass cube was smashed with a stone by local youths. She embraced this vandalizing act and renamed the work One Cubic Meter of Broken Silence (2009).
Sarah van Sonsbeeck (b. 1976) studied architecture at TU Delft (MA) and art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (BA). In 2008-2009 she had a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. She had solo exhibitons at the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2017), Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2017). Her work was amongst others on show at De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (2013), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2013), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012), Museum De Paviljoens, Almere (2009), Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2011), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2009). She is represented by Annet Gelink gallery Amsterdam.

The proceeds of the Artists in Residence project are donated to the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. The Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds aims to encourage inspiration, purpose, and social interconnection for everyone in the Netherlands by investing in cultural projects together with its partners. The Cultuurfonds supports and helps realize projects of cultural organizations and artists by raising funds and handing out awards for outstanding work.