Sarah Slappey (b. 1984, Columbia, SC)
Sarah Slappey is a painter based in Brooklyn whose work inhabits a liminal space between comfort and disquiet. Her canvases fragment and reassemble limbs, hands, feet, and connective flesh in isolated, dreamlike fields, exploring the interplay of vulnerability, desire, and corporeal dissonance. Her visual language is rooted in paradox: softness meets aggression, the banal collides with the uncanny, pleasure unsettles.
Slappey earned her BA in Studio Art from Wake Forest University in 2006 and her MFA in Painting from Hunter College in 2016.
Her solo and two-person exhibitions include Bloodline (Bernheim, London, 2024), Sacrifices (Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich, 2022), Self Care (Sargent’s Daughters, New York, 2021), Tenderizer (Maria Bernheim, 2020), and Power Play (Sargent’s Daughters, 2020). She has also participated in group exhibitions at institutions and venues such as Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, ICA Miami, White Cube, Tick Tack Antwerp, Pace HK, and the Columbus Museum of Art.
Her awards include the Hunter College Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Hunter College Kossak Travel Grant (2015), and she was a Wake Forest Presidential Scholarship in Art recipient.
Slappey’s paintings reside in collections including the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, D.C.), the Albertina Museum (Vienna), Pérez Art Museum (Miami), Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (Geneva), Orange County Museum of Art, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Zabludowicz Collection, and others.
She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.