Sarah Koik

Bio

Sarah Koik is a recent graduate from the University of Puget Sound. She is currently pursuing a Post-Baccalaureate certificate at the San Francisco Art Institute in sculpture. Her work is interested in the public and private spaces of memory, and how these spaces can recreate, re-imagine, and even construct our memories of the past. She has exhibited in group shows at Kittredge Gallery and minigallery in Tacoma, Washington.

Statement

In April of 2007, a controversial memorial in Estonia was voted by the government to be moved from its park location. The hope was to help dissipate the tensions resulting from the Soviet occupation prior to, during, and after World War II. Instead, the decision drew international attention and reopened collective wounds within the cultural memory and identity of Estonia. How then, when a memorial is pulled from a space, is the vacant site re appropriated?

My proposal is a response to the complexity of the space that embodied a tumultuous, painful, and paradoxical time in Estonia. The Estonian title translated is “Up in Smoke (Disappear),” yet in Estonian the phrase does not make sense. I intentionally chose this contradiction to place my project in a context, which is that of an American trying to understand from afar. I also wanted to note the contradiction of the previous monument's title, which to some represented liberation, but to others was another form of occupation.

Erasure leaves a residue. Smoke is a residue of erasure. The persistent smoke seeping from the ground is what was seen after the guns were fired... what was seen at the camps where many were erased... what was seen when the riots burned the cars... what was seen when the eternal flame at the memorial was put out.

My hope is to create a site that visualizes the ephemeral, ghostly effects of our decisions and to place this installation in the global context of communal struggle.