Science Fictions: The Artwork of Sarah Hearn by Jennifer Barron
Installation view of Sarah Hearn’s An Unnatural History at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Courtesy of multimedia artist Sarah Hearn, you are cordially invited to explore the Institute of Aquatic Research. Founded in 2008, this unique organization brings viewers to a submarine world charted through detailed research, one-of-a-kind depictions of undersea plant and animal life, and bizarre and captivating scientific histories. Throughout its website at www.instituteofaquaticresearch.com, visitors can experience a new world. In fact, this world is entirely new. The website, the research, the creatures and the Institute itself are completely invented by the artist. An Unnatural History- an installation and body of work blurring the boundaries between science, science fiction, and art- was recently on
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display at [ArtSpace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City, featuring much of Hearn’s thesis project from her graduate work at the Rochester Institute of Technology. An Unnatural History was included as a part of the Creativity World Biennale, an exhibition that featured representatives from eight different regions of the world- from Flanders, Belgium and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Oklahoma. Hearn – along with Tulsa artists Bob Sober and Tom Pershall and Oklahoma City artist Brian Eyerman – represented Oklahoma in the Biennale. “One person was actually really upset with me,” she tells me. “She felt lied to.” Hearn’s goal with this body of work is not to deceive, but since this work confronts viewers with the very ways we process information and blurs lines between ‘real’ and ‘made-up,’ our ability to interpret