Sage Dawson is an artist and curator whose work examines the politics of housing and labor in the US. Her work addresses issues facing sites and power structures including the erasure of vernacular architecture. 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.
Sage is currently the Co-Director at STNDRD (Granite City, Illinois) and NON STNDRD (Sauget, Illinois). She has curated exhibitions at The Luminary, Loyola Marymount University, ACRE Projects, the Terrain Biennial, and Dalton Warehouse. Sage is a Senior Lecturer and Foundations Coordinator 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, NARS Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space/Printed Matter, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Chicago Artists Coalition, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn), Tate Exchange, Boston University School of Visual Arts, Terrain Biennial, Practise (Chicago), Super Duchess (New York), Laumeier Sculpture Park, Springfield Art Museum, The Luminary, City University of New York, Counterpublic Triennial, University of Pennsylvania, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Work • Detroit, and International Print Center New York.
Sage is a recipient of grants from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, Mid America Print Council, Critical Mass St Louis, and the Futures Fund supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation and regranted by The Luminary. She is also a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant Nominee and recipient of the Paris Studio at the Cité International Des Arts in Paris. 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.