Sara van der Heide is one of four artists commissioned by If I Can't Dance to produce a new work as part of Edition V – Appropriation and Dedication (2013-2014).

With her new work Sara van der Heide aspires to acknowledge those processes that are rarely appreciated within present value systems focused on linear growth and material gain. Her research derives from a sense of urgency and commitment that the artist feels towards attempting to make a paradigm shift.

In Van der Heide's studio practice, for instance, the private confines of the studio allow for an intuitive process that lets work come into being in stutters, over a prolonged stretch of time. It requires a slow perception to recognise what is taking place. Such movements of reluctant materialisation can also be found elsewhere, in cycles of growth and collapse. Calling upon the figures of 'Mother Earth' and the Sun, Van der Heide thinks about the continuous processes of 'nature' in terms of value and investment. Her focus is on the value of what is there at any given moment, rather than on progress-based accumulation.

In Van der Heide’s art, colour and light are subtly joined in works that enfold time and require time, and produce different imaginaries or levels of consciousness, transcending a cerebral understanding of things. On the other hand she employs a careful use of modernist vocabularies and motives that often imply a sharp assessment of Western systems of thinking, organizing and classifying. Her attitude towards a modernist legacy of art and the medium of painting in combination with language and performance is defined by a critical exploration of its potentials, and testifies to the sensitivity of a feminist position.

Biography
Sara van der Heide (1977, Busan, South Korea) followed the post-graduate programme De Ateliers in Amsterdam (1999-2001) and lives and works in Amsterdam. In 2007 she was a fellow resident at ISCP New York. Her interest in the affective, formal and linguistic qualities of colour, light results in works on paper, performative works and interventions. Recent projects include a.o.: the intervention Goethe-Institut Reading Room Pyongyang at the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam (2013); the performance series Abstract Background with One or Two Figures at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2012); the durational work Hollands Kabinet (2010-2012), which was on view at De Appel, arts centre (2011) and later at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012). She has had solo exhibitions at: KIOSK, Ghent, (B) (2012); and the Van Abbemuseum (2012).