Biography

Sara Von Kienegger is an International artist, photographer, painter, and designer, based out of her birthplace in Graz, Austria. Throughout Von Kienegger's life, her talent in art has been constant, winning her first award by the time she was 10 and having paintings exhibited in 19 countries by the age of 19. In 2010, Sara became one of the youngest Art Directors in the MENA region after moving to Dubai in 2010 and overseeing the art direction of Faces of the Middle East and Women of the UAE. Much of Sara's work is inspired by her time in the Middle East as an apprentice under the world-renowned calligrapher Khalifa El Shimy. She incorporates the idea that art fosters Peace, Tranquility, and Unity as a thematic thread throughout her work after observing the brutality and incongruity that enveloped much of the Middle East. These global experiences have shaped Sara Von Kienegger's unique perspective and artistic voice.

Through her work, Sara strives to return a sense of humanity and compassion to a world largely desensitized by a constant influx of graphic, war-centric imagery. Exhibitions such as Faces of the Middle East, exhibited in 2011, and Victims of War, exhibited in 2013, aim to encourage cross-cultural understanding and empathy between Middle Eastern and Western cultures.

Sara's art installation entitled, "Fallen Stars" was featured during Art Miami in December 2014. The installation simultaneously captured the subjects' pain and celebrated their lives, honestly and emotionally reflecting their diversity, vulnerability, and strength. Also in December 2014, Von Kienegger's award-winning piece "Fallen Stars: The Mondrian Series" was displayed at the VIP entrance at Art Spectrum and Art Mana, an honor given to her by a selection jury of over 140 artists.

Sara Von Kienegger's newest body of work "White on White" was exhibited at Sundance Film Festival in January 2015. Evoking the images of James Franco's "Yosemite" and David Lean's "Doctr Zhivago", the installation elicits the beauty of a winter wonderland. With the installation, Von Kienegger sought to bring to mind all that is reflected in the mountains of Utah and the vulnerability and strength of men and animals combating the elements of winter.

In Sara's latest paintings, the viewer encounters a miasmic world of guilty visual pleasures, from opulent colors to hazy landscapes, all seen through her seductively decadent yet playfully loose brushwork. In keeping with previous exhibitions' underlying evocative and, at times, lavish imagery, one encounters the psychology of desire, loss, and the beauty. The viewer finds him or herself in an alternate universe that conjures images of the iconic Merchant Ivory aesthetic- or a fever dream, as ghostlike figures disintegrate into the backgrounds. Abstraction runs throughout the works, bending spaces, interrupting scenes, and transforming emblems of power into her paintings.

In 2015, Sara is set to help produce James Franco's "Actors Anonymous". She also recently donated "Mauthausen" from her Holocaust exhibit to The Synagogue for The Arts in New York City's Tribecca.

Her latest work "Dolls" was a inspired by childhood memories and is sure to be well received.
- IMDb mini biography by: Edward Bass