BIOGRAPHY

Sara Berman was born in 1975 in the UK, and lives and works in London. She studied fashion (BA) at Central Saint Martins in the 1990s and worked in fashion before studying for her MFA at Slade UCL in 2016. Sara Berman examines the societal constructs of the female experience and radicalizes the historically female domain of portraiture by depicting a harlequin figure as a sorceress or trickster. As a former fashion designer, Berman engages the materiality of the canvas in painterly evocations of textiles, patterns, and interiors that highlight the female body. In these loose representations of self-portraits, Berman reclaims a female gaze and feminine power. Her figures reside in a space of confident self-reflection, highlighted by muted tones and delicate washes of color rendered with a fluidity of line. She works layers of paint onto the surface—scraping and wiping—and in the process suggests the distortions from which the audience views the female body. Berman’s work eloquently suggests a transgressive beauty by the combination of defiant figures with a gorgeous materiality.

Exhibitions include Between Community and Commerce, Site specific installation ZAZ10TS Time Square, New York (2018); Matter Out Of Place, 93 Baker St. London, Frieze (2018); and Big Cactus Little Cactus, Galerie Huit, Hong Kong (2017), Home is where the Art is, De Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2022); Like there is hope and I can dream of another world, Hospital Rooms in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK (2022); Summer Exhibition 2021, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021). Berman’s work can be found in the collection of The House of KOKO, London; The Poort Visser collection, Netherlands; The Maison Estelle, London, UK; The RO2 Art Collection and the Montparnasse Collection, Canada.

Sara Berman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery opens in March 2025

My work deals directly with my experience as a woman and the roles I play within what I perceive as the existing societal constructs... Beneath all my paintings is the trope of the Harlequin as played by a woman. Tradition has this as a male role with the harlequin as a jester, a joker, a lovable rouge. When played by a woman, she is given the role of the Trickster Whore and has no agency. This is the backdrop against which all my paintings are made…I paint myself because these are my politics. It isn’t about an accurate representation of my face, but what is going on inside and often the masking that happens for me.

THE BODY ELECTRIC (GROUP SHOW)