Sarah Baker
Sarah Baker’s art challenges expectations of cultural representation. She inserts herself in her work as a self-made celebrity by imitating iconographic pop media such as promo posters, music videos, advertising, and fashion magazine photography. Baker’s work employs superficiality of the branded image to examine celebrity, sex, class, and culture.
An essential tool used in her iconic portraits is the monogram, also used as a template for her opulent collages. Strongly influenced by the monograms of fashion powerhouse Louis Vuitton, Baker is fascinated by the monogram’s relentless suggestion of history, tradition, and supreme status. By stealing the idea of a family seal or crest, her own signature acts as a brand to empower and establish a mythical tradition. Colliding high and low culture, her work becomes a mixing pot of cultural imagery that imply association through repetitive unification of contrasting icons.
Baker was born in San Francisco in 1977 and grew up in Buffalo, New York where she competed in synchronized swimming and was a U.S. National medalist. Baker received her BFA degree at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000 and her MA degree at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2002. She is now living and working in the UK.
