Raw Light

The Goldmark Cultural Center’s Ruth Andres Gallery presents “Raw Light”, an exhibition of new installation works by Goldmark artist Sheridan Hines.

The exhibition is on display from 14 July 2025 to 27 July 2025. There is a closing reception for the exhibition on Saturday 26 July 2025 from 1pm - 3pm. The reception is an ideal time to meet the artist and learn about her artwork.

About the Exhibition

Raw Light is an immersive installation that confronts the psychological residue embedded in the objects that surround us—those that haunt, hurt, and help shape our identity. Centered in the space is a cube of synthetic “skin,” exposed yet contained, surrounded by hanging red cellophane—its transparency and fragility a veil that both reveals and obscures. The atmosphere is thick with a sense of memory and discomfort.

In the corner, a dilapidated chair glows under the oppressive weight of red light. Perched nearby is a doll—weathered, uncanny—its presence more spectral than comforting. These objects are not props; they are witnesses, stand-ins, and echoes of familial trauma, domestic unrest, and personal history.

This work invites viewers to reflect on the inanimate companions of our lives—the ones that stay long after people leave. It asks what it means to be shaped by spaces and things, and how grief, identity, and memory are often coded into the material world around us. Nothing in this space is passive; everything is watching.

About the Artist

Discomfort is something we’re taught to avoid, but in my work, I run toward it. I create sculptural pieces that confront the physical, emotional, and psychological discomforts surrounding illness, trauma, and the body. Using industrial materials like resin, silicone, foam, and biotic matter, I construct lifelike forms that blur the line between attraction and repulsion—inviting viewers to linger with what we’re told to hide.

My practice is rooted in lived experience. I’ve spent more time in hospitals and waiting rooms than in classrooms. From childhood illness to chronic invisible conditions like hypothyroidism and endometriosis, to surviving domestic violence and sexual assault, my life has been shaped by trauma—medical, familial, and societal. These experiences are not just backstory; they are the core of my work. I use sculpture to process and externalize what has often been internalized in silence.

In my recent work, I explore the emotional residue of trauma, particularly the haunting relationship we have with inanimate objects—furniture, personal belongings, or materials that witnessed violence and carry unspoken memories. These objects are not passive. They hold presence. By merging my body with them, sometimes literally embedding my hair or skin-like textures, I blur the line between self and object, history and material, subject and viewer.

Through texture, form, and the use of experimental materials, I aim to push the boundary of realism—creating works that feel both corporeal and ghostly. I want the viewer to question their relationship to illness, to mortality, to memory. My sculptures are not meant to soothe. They are meant to stay with you.

Above all, my work is about reclaiming narrative. I am a survivor, and I create not just to tell my story, but to open space for others—especially those who have been silenced. Art, for me, is a form of resistance and restoration. It is a place where vulnerability becomes power, and where taboo becomes testimony.

- Sheridan Hines