“SaraNoa Mark’s work stood out for me as an exceedingly thoughtful exploration of the power of mark-making; their deceptively simple work contains far-reaching implications about place, the nature of collective memory, museum practice, and the post-colonial condition.” – Juror René Morales, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, MCA Chicago.

SaraNoa Mark is the 2023 LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation Artadia Award recipient.

SaraNoa Mark (b.1991 NY) examines traces left by time, in landscapes and collective memory. SaraNoa’s work has been supported by a Fulbright research fellowship in Turkey, U.S. Embassy Mission Grants Program in Turkey, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, John Anson Kittredge Fund, Illinois Arts Council, Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artists Program (DCASE), West Collection LIFTS, and a SPARK grant. Recent exhibitions of their work have taken place at the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Daniel Faira Gallery, Toronto, CA; Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Davis & Langdale Company, New York, NY; Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, IL; 5333, Istanbul, TR among others. SaraNoa is a co-director at the 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago. 

Mark’s practice is founded in the construction of memory, as told through carved languages – from cuneiform tablets to sidewalk graffiti – that document an eternal impulse to score picture into place. Mark employs enduring materials to explore permanence and erasure to archive the presence of absence. Their sculptures are rooted in observation and fieldwork. In their reliefs, time is counted slowly, through repeated carved gestures. These marks accumulate in works that form a physical accounting, providing an alternative means of measuring existence outside the world of commodified time. Making art is their method of becoming a witness.