Saulaman Schlegel

7 Knots (or you’re a sissy)

Cinderblocks, manilla rope, ink on paper, zine takeaway

“My practice is an act of reinterpreting the divine. By encountering familiar Western and spiritual images on soft household objects, viewers are asked to consider the divine embedded within the mundane. Through traditional and non-traditional methods alike, I create performances and sculptures that are conceptual and spiritual yet contain elements of nostalgia. Personal struggles with gender and sexuality have made it difficult to understand where I fit in—growing up in a religious home reinforced feelings of shame around any questions I had about being different. In reenacting spiritual practices and treating art as ceremony, I can create my own space for existence outside of sexual and gender binary and show others that the inability to be categorized is not a detriment but a unique source of strength and beauty.

'7 Knots' is a question about specific materials and their potential to hold an opportunity to become a site of mindfulness or transcendence if approached in certain ways. I offer this installation as an opportunity to bring this question into other areas of your life. How will the material, we, you, function?"

— Saulaman Schlegel

About the artist

Saulaman Schlegel

Saulaman Schlegel (they/them) is an emerging, multidisciplinary artist, currently experimenting with religious practices like prayer, baptism, and communion as a vehicle for expressing complex identity issues. They confront the historical disconnect of queerness in traditional societal, biological, and spiritual systems. Sexuality, gender, and the taboo have always been of particular interest to them. Saulaman attended Grand View University, where they received a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts, and a concentration in Creative Writing. Saulaman currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they work in freelance Art Handling, and as an Installations and Gallery Technician. Saulaman possesses work experience with non-profits, museums, public and private galleries, and non-traditional spaces.