Sarah Lucas

Encompassing a wide-ranging medium—photography, collage, sculpture, performance, and installation—Sarah Lucas’ (b. 1962, London) singular and confrontational body of work subverts conventional notions of gender, mortality, and social identity. Imbued with visual and semiotic puns, Lucas creates provocative works—often ambiguous and suggestive representations of the human form—that explores the contextual relationship between familiarity and absurdity. Appropriating everyday materials such as cigarettes, food, furniture, and tights, Lucas challenges normative societal interpretations with touches of satirical humor and euphemisms to bring awareness to the behavior and understanding of the exchange between people and their surrounding objects. Sarah Lucas studied in London at the Working Men’s College, London College of Printing, and Goldsmiths’ College. As a member of the Young British Artists (YBA), Lucas participated in the 1988 exhibition, Freeze organized by Damien Hirst. Lucas has since exhibited at numerous international institutions: Tate Britain (London), Tate Modern (London), Freud Museum (London), Tecla Sala (Barcelona), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen (Rotterdam), Portikus (Frankfurt), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein Hamburg, Tate Liverpool, Legion of Honor (San Francisco), Whitechapel Gallery (London), and many more. In 2015, Lucas represented the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with her exhibition I SCREAM DADDIO . Most recently in 2018, the artist had her first American retrospective Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel at the New Museum in New York, which travelled to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Sarah Lucas lives and works in Suffolk, UK. Sarah Lucas, one of the most influential British artists of the time, is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humor by incorporating photography, collage, and found object s . Lucas’s most iconic piece of work Eating a Banana is a series of self-portraits that did not have any edition until 2017. Her works are ambiguous, paradoxical, and rudely and wittily defy gender stereotypes in society. Working with Feminist ideas, Lucas has transformed everyday objects such as cigarettes, fruits, and vegetables into sexual symbols, and gradually expanded the subject matter to genetic research and social problems that cause destruction of culture and arts.