Las Sabinas | Sabina Rak

We are two artists, Sabina Gámez Ibarra and Sabina Rak, currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal working under the name Las Sabinas.

(email: lasabinas.gr@gmail.com)

Las Sabinas Artist Statement and the project Sabinar

"Once upon a time, there were the Sabina women,
whose fight turned into stories,
which turned into myths,
which turned into movies,
which turned into artworks,
which turned into performances,
which turned into a chance meeting,
which led to a re-invasion of history.
A reason to join forces, bodies, art practices.”

Our collaboration developed through an obsession with the theme of the Abduction of the Sabine Women throughout art history. For us, this theme speaks broadly of conquest, colonisation, power relations, and the representation of women in art. But we're not making art about what happened in the 10th century BC; we are tackling themes that persist, and which still embody history in the present day.

Las Sabinas is a vehicle to question who tells the history: two women from different backgrounds and generations, but united as one historical entity with all the Sabinas. We research through performance, which we developed as a ritual, a persistent conversation that is still necessary.

Embracing a DIY approach, humour, absurdity, subversion, looping, repurposing, we reuse materials, images, and gestures. Our intention is to occupy and intervene into the galleries, museums, institutions where representations of the Sabine women are hosted. In search of our sisters, we will rummage through archives to unearth, converse, and disturb, disrupting conventional modes of research to uncover the richness and diversity of Sabinas’ presence.

In play, one also strengthens social bonds. Working as Las Sabinas has made us feel stronger together. In our collaboration, we each planted ideas to play with, but we grew them and nourished them together. There were laughs, moments of doubt, trust, challenges, juggling words, searching dictionaries for translations and synonyms, leaning into similarities and differences, and having fun in thinking together.

Maybe all this is about the action of Sabinar: finding one’s people across frontiers.

Chapter 1: We once found ourselves in Paris https://vimeo.com/864156450
Chapter 2: We once found ourselves in the Fall of the Roman Empire https://vimeo.com/865189878
Chapter 3: We once found ourselves in Madrid https://vimeo.com/996272756
Chapter 4: We once found ourselves in Toronto https://vimeo.com/1023020205

Exhibitions / Performances / Talks

Maureen IX, group exhibition organised by the Master of Fine Arts Studio Arts Student Association, Concordia University
June 12-15, 2024 at Ateliers Belleville

Embodied Interventions 5th EDITION: The Tentacular Inquiry of Performance
May 4 & 5, 2024 at Milieux Institute, Concordia University
https://www.leparcmilieux.com/embodied-interventions

Thinking Allowed Fall Colloquium, Concordia University
Thinking Allowed: Social Justice, Migration, and the Environment
October 20, 2023 recorded at 4th Space, Concordia University
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkYVqFlb5B8&t=1231s