Saskia Krafft

Saskia Krafft (b. Lower Saxony, Germany) merges elements of costume design, architecture, land art, and printmaking to explore fundamental questions about the self and the unconscious, location and dislocation, and how to translate the “in-betweenness” of our lives. Her visual language takes inspiration from places she’s visited and lived. Starting with drawings, rooted in sketchbook and journal, Krafft transforms the two-dimensional line into sculptural materials, creating psychological portraits of those places and herself in them.

Exposed to technical drafting and costume fabrication as a young artist, Krafft’s recent mixed media constructions show how deftly she uses drawing to translate language into multi-level compositions that evoke the curtain opening onto a symbolic drama. Examining consciousness and self-authoring, the layers in Krafft’s work harken to the depths and surfaces of the self. Plasma cuts of plant matter lie beneath fabric—silk organza or chiffon—festooned with glazed ceramic platelets, then strung tautly, creating a sense of network and mesh. Enmeshment in personal relationships is a major theme, and though Krafft’s work engages with the paradoxical nature of the ensuing emotions (remorse, bereavement, heartbreak), at last her work conveys hope. That hope is borne of the artist creating a home of her art, for instance, recombining the ceramic platelets into growing architectures that offer both habitat and refuge. Krafft explores personal transitions by undoing the seeming dichotomies of upheaval and rootedness, commitment and growth, boundaries and possibilities. Ultimately, Saskia Krafft’s work endeavors to construct a sense of belonging in the experience of life.