Sariah Park
Embedded Wasteland

Media: Handmade paper made from waste, kanaf and textile waste

Artist Statement:
This piece is concerned with addressing issues of waste. Every year, 20 million tons of post consumer textile waste are put into landfills. After years of working as a textile artist and seeing this waste creation first hand, I wanted to find a way to unmake waste and give value back to these materials. This piece is made using waste, transforming discarded material into new forms. I started incorporating the textile waste from my print work into papermaking, experimenting with different methods of embedding fabric, fiber and thread waste into my handmade paper. This piece in particular speaks to our society’s addiction to materialism and the cycle of consumerism.

Biography

Sariah Park is an interdisciplinary artist with over fifteen years of experience in fiber, print, and fashion design. Sariah's current research is focused on the development of sustainable printing methods for textiles and fine art practices. Her most recent body of work features the up-cycling and repurposing of dead stock and damaged printed textiles into new forms and printing with waste to create large-scale works on paper. Sariah’s work aims to challenge the status quo of making and asks important questions regarding societal and industrial waste, consumption, sourcing, and methods of manufacturing.