Imagine being towered over by one of Sarah Peters’ mute, bronze hollow-eyed woman heads as if it were guarding your entrance to the Temple of Athena. Her cascading locks might form the columns of a gigantic gateway. Though Peters’ sculptures are not monumental but human scale, they trigger our imagination of monumentality through the familiarity of her references. What unites idols, totems, sci-fi movie props like Darth Vader’s mask, and public monuments to power, is a geometric paring down and refinement of complex bodily forms. Their minimalistic geometry echoes ideals that are simultaneously both awe inspiring and audience diminishing, demanding of worship but refusing to speak. According to Peters, it has become apparent how sculpture can be used to represent power. Whether it is the power of the State, Religion, or Aristocracy, or even sculpture’s ability to control how we move through space, Peters is fascinated by the question of who controls it, how it is employed, and most importantly, how does that power formally manifest itself through the hands of the artist?
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