Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1969, Sze studied painting and architecture at Yale University, graduating in 1991, before earning her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1997. Emerging in the late 1990s, she quickly gained international recognition for site-specific environments meticulously assembled from consumer objects and industrial materials.
Through her practice, Sze often explores how objects acquire meaning, combining everyday materials, light, kinetic elements and moving images. Addressing themes of perception, decay and the fragility of human experience, her works reconfigure how viewers navigate built environments.
Her achievements have been recognised through prestigious honours including a 2003 MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013, Sze represented the United States at the 55th Venice Biennale with her landmark installation Triple Point, and she has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Fondation Cartier, the Whitney Museum of American Art and SFMOMA. Her work is held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate and the Centre Pompidou.
Represented by Victoria Miro and Gagosian, Sze has undertaken major public commissions and gallery projects worldwide. Landmark works such as Blueprint for a Landscape (2017) for New York’s 96th Street subway station, Shorter Than the Day (2020) at LaGuardia Airport and Timelapse (2023) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum demonstrate her ongoing exploration of how physical and digital worlds overlap. She currently teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts.
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Long Ending
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Spell
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Flicker
Sarah Sze (b. 1969)
Surprise Ending
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Afterimage, Grey and White and Rainbow Spectral (Painting in its Archive)
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Notes on Circumstance
SARAH SZE (b. 1969)
Migrateurs (Red Lamp)
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Skipping Stone
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Night
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
Funny Feeling
SARAH SZE (B. 1969)
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