Sage Dawson is an artist and curator whose work examines the politics of housing and labor inherent to the American city. Her work addresses issues facing sites and power structures including the erasure of vernacular architecture, invisible borders, and care as a form of protest. Embedding into the topography of the built environment, her work signals an ever-changing and expanding politics of space. She’s drawn to analog approaches to technology, and explores ways of making that typify domestic labor: banner-making, needlepoint, open-work, patterning, and sewing. Engaging in these means of production activate, realize, and archive their specific history.
Sage co-founded Monaco (St. Louis), and is currently the Director at STNDRD (Granite City, Illinois)–a public art project examining the power and potential of flags. She completed an MFA with a Museum Studies minor from the University of New Mexico, and a BFA from Missouri State University. She has curated exhibitions at The Luminary (St. Louis), Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles), ACRE Projects (Stueben, Wisconsin), the Terrain Biennial (Springfield, Illinois), and Dalton Warehouse (Los Angeles). Sage is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University, St. Louis.
Sage has exhibited, lectured, and presented work at various sites including the Center for Contemporary Printmaking Norwalk, the NARS Foundation, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space/Printed Matter, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Chicago Artists Coalition, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn), Tate Exchange, Boston University School of Visual Arts, the Terrain Biennial, Practise (Chicago), Super Duchess (New York), the Saint Louis Art Museum, Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Springfield Art Museum, The Luminary, the City University of New York, the Counterpublic Triennial, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toledo Center for the Visual Arts, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Work • Detroit, and the International Print Center New York.
Sage is a recipient of the Creative Stimulus Award from Critical Mass for the Visual Arts St. Louis, an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission (St. Louis), a Research Travel Grant from the Mid America Print Council, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant Nominee, and is the recipient of the Paris Studio at the Cité International Des Arts in Paris from Washington University. She has completed residencies at ACRE, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Zygote Press, the Luminary, and Vermont Studio Center. She was awarded the Denbo Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic, and has previously worked in collaboration at the Tamarind Institute.
Her work has appeared in Art in America, Elephant Magazine, From Here to There published by Princeton Architectural Press, New Art Examiner, New City Art, Saint Louis Public Radio, 60 Wrd/Min Art Critic, Art in Print, Dwell Magazine, and Hyperallergic.