Work - 2021 - PopUpShow — Sara Vanderbeek

Pop-Up Show

Pop-Up camper sits in a thick forest grove. Clotheslines connect from the camper to the trees, on which large, colorful paintings on fabric hang by artist Sara Vanderbeek.

Summer 2021 - Pop-up Show is a mobile exhibition project featuring new works by artist Sara Vanderbeek installed within and surrounding the pop-up camper in which the artist and her family lived and traveled during 2020.

Sheltered during the pandemic, Vanderbeek drove thousands of miles with her partner and child and experienced an expansive but distant view of the country. The camper acted as a safety net, home, office, classroom, and studio for them as America slid into an increasingly polarized political landscape of protests, climate crises, and a historic racial justice movement.

Vanderbeek’s expressive figurative fabric paintings covers most of the camper’s interior surfaces and hang outside, blowing in the breeze like laundry on clotheslines. The painting’s bright colors reference nature but also signal alarm and dissent. Visceral depictions of family, domesticity, and travel are contrasted with portraits of depression, forests burning in California, and the endless media feed of tumultuous political news.