Super Dakota

Sarah Derat (b. 1984) is a french artist living in London.
Sarah Derat’s practice is centered at the precise intersection of sculpture/installation and tech, both physical and digital.


Under a transdisciplinary umbrella encompassing disciplines such as archeology, paleoanthropology, and neurosciences, Derat produces a corpus of works – from silicone rubber pieces to videos & AI-generated sound pieces – to explore the complex and endlessly shape-shifting nature of our relationship to technology and the possible resonances of machine-learned & automated systems on language, cognition, and society at large.

Since 2017, Derat developed a distinctive use of silicone rubber, at the crossroads of printmaking & mould-making; leading to a production of works ranging from small pieces to large-scale modular installations presenting themselves as non-linear research maps, offering no simple narrative but a multitude of non-hierarchical entry points.
As part of an ongoing research into the question of natural/neural language & human/non-human ability to emote, the artist produced a series of videos in collaboration with the Head of Digital & Egyptian Antiquities curatorial team of The Fitzwilliam Museum, The British Museum & Ashmolean Museum.

Derat has earned her BA in Art History/Archeology from the Ecole du Louvre (2005) and her BA & MA in Fine Arts from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2009/2011). She has received the Project Grant and DYCP fund from the Arts Council of England in (2017/2019) and the Project Travel Grant for the European Cultural Foundation (2018).

Her work is part of Paprec collection, Nantes and Musée Roybet-Fould, Courbevoie. In 2019 and 2020 she was a recipient of Mindspaces Residency, S+T+ARTS/Lighthouse European Commission. She has exhibited internationally, with solo shows in UK, France, and Belgium. Her work has been featured in fairs LISTE Art Fair Basel, Art Cologne, Art Brussels, and Code Art Fair Copenhagen.