Sarah Richani

Sarah Richani, originally from Lebanon, is an artist based in Zurich, Switzerland. She works with mixed media including collage techniques, textural pastes, metal erosion and uses oil, gouache or acrylic paint on canvas or cardboard. In her art, she tackles topics related to philosophy, psychology, and society.

Special topic/concept of "Shaped by memories" by Sarah Richani
This series of paintings by Sarah Richani centers around how experiences shape who we are. The stories of our lives are created by the power of forming memories. Some memories are life changing events that we always remember. Others may seem trivial, like our daily routines and encounters.
For the artist, we are the product of all the bits and pieces of grand or minor individual memories and everyday experiences. Her paintings display fragmented pieces of recollections, each telling a different story, as if a diary exploded on the canvas. A snapshot of floating memories, old ones that appear interlaced in a flowing process of time and space, and vibrant new ones that are just being formed.

There is a constant change, things shifting, rusting, pain and joy, threads with loose ends, reconstructing, sense of being, stitching and patching our scars, recreating, making sense of who we are. At the end, we are our memories. And once we understand that; we could be creating the memories that we desire through our everyday experiences.

Her paintings are layers of oil paint, charcoal, collage, paste and eroded metal solutions on jute canvas. Time and change are depicted by patches of accelerated and uncontrolled metal solution erosion. She uses symbolism and materials transform to carry new meanings. The threads, for example, represent tally marks but also signify healing old scars and putting our lives together. Some of the collages are previous artworks of hers, "mise en abyme", a painting within a painting, a story within the bigger story. A multi layered process comes all together to reveal the journey of us evolving, understanding who we are and finding our purpose.

Sarah Richani: New Horizon / Oil paint, metal solution, oxidation medium, collage, paste and charcoal on jute canvas / 170 x 170 cm / 2020

Sarah Richani: The Bigger Picture / Oil paint, metal solution, oxidation medium, collage, paste and soft pastel on jute canvas / 130 x 130 cm / 2021

Sarah Richani: Glimpse into the past / Oil paint, metal solution, oxidation medium, collage and paste on jute canvas / 120 x 120 cm

Sarah Richani: In the Soil / Oil paint, metal solution, oxidation medium, collage and paste on jute canvas / 100 x 100 cm