HAERTIG GONZALEZ
ARTIST STATEMENT
Working primarily in sculpture, installation, and text, my practice critiques the systemic forces that shape our bodies, environments, and economies, particularly under late-stage capitalism. I explore how the commodification of space and resources fractures our connections to broader ecologies and undermines collective agency. Through creative object-making and the transformation of space, I aim to restore these connections, fostering deeper relationships with the body and environment while cultivating new intermediaries between them.
At the same time, I reflect on the societal obsession with optimization and the haunting allure of mechanical infrastructure, which embodies a bittersweet dichotomy: machines as elegant, aspirational extensions of human potential, yet often also reduced to tools of exploitation under capitalist imperatives. Governed by technological rationality, these systems can distance us from spirituality, ritual, and imagination- qualities essential to fostering connection and wonder. My work interrogates how these infrastructures transform life into commodities and data, while also exploring the tensions between human, machine, and environment as dynamic sites of negotiation, self-acceptance, and the reimagining of mutual care.
Hybrid forms- blurring the boundaries between human, animal, commodity, and machine- emerge in my sculptures, reflecting the complexities of contemporary existence. By reconfiguring materials such as kitchen cabinets, luggage, and poultry evisceration machines, and merging them with biological or humanoid elements, I reveal the socio-political conditions they embody and the absurdity of the systems that shape our lives.
Lately, my focus has shifted toward envisioning alternative models of sustainability, equity, and shared agency between humans, animals, and machines. My sculptures- abject yet familiar- encourage viewers to reflect on the systems of our present moment and consider creative pathways toward freer, more equitable, and sustainable futures.
BIO
Sabrina Haertig Gonzalez is a Dominican-German multimedia artist currently based in New York. She received her BFA from Cornell University in 2022, graduating among the top 1% of her class and being selected as one of 42 Merrill Presidential Scholars out of over 15,000 undergraduates, in recognition of her leadership and academic contributions. She was awarded the Presidential Rawlings Scholarship, the Edith Adams and Walter King Stone Memorial Prize, and the Faculty Medal of Art, and served as Degree Marshal for her graduating class. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including My Best Self at The Soil Factory (Ithaca, NY) and Connections II at the Fowler-Kellogg Art Center (Chautauqua, NY).
Following graduation, Gonzalez joined the curatorial collective Ortega y Gasset as its youngest Co-Director in 2023. She also gained experience in the blue-chip gallery environment as a photographer, regularly engaging in artistic critique and consultation with prominent artists. Gonzalez later worked at a high-growth AI startup, where she explored the impact of AI on in-person sales analytics, surveillance, and market trends. She is currently focused on a series of experimental sculptures that reimagine the forms of public memorials and time capsules, interrogating the interplay between surveillance, agency, and collective memory. Her work seeks to foster alternative dialogues around sustainability, equity and shared agency between humans, animals, and machines.