If I’m quiet it’ll get me, 2020, tape and charcoal. Dimensions variable. Images courtesy of the artist.

Sarah Catania

Throughout my practice, I often work with themes of trauma and emotional distress. My work, If I’m quiet it’ll get me, explores the feeling of becoming overwhelmed in times of quiet and isolation. In this piece, I reflect on past experiences, where I’ve become so overwhelmed that I found it hard to do anything that didn’t involve distraction. The bathroom was an extremely loaded space for me, showering was a massive difficulty in these times as it was just me, alone with myself and my thoughts. The prints were a result of an experimentation of tracking and recording physical traces. In this way, I was able to take a snapshot of a physical attribute and preserve it using printmaking.

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Sarah Catania draws on her own life experiences to create works that engage with trauma, loss, grief, and memory. Her prints and drawings are often monochromatic, the darker colour schemes expressive of her melancholic inner thoughts. Catania uses her mediums to explore the impact of her own psychological struggles and reflect on the consequences of negative experiences in her own life which have impacted her. Catania uses art-making as a way to process life and give expression to experiences that can be difficult to verbalise and acknowledge, such as pain and fear.