Artist statement

Sarah Nõmm (b. 1998) is an artist based in Tallinn, whose work explores the body’s powerful, fragile, and charged presence in space. Her practice centers around sculpture, installation, and material-based research, intertwining personal experience with themes of folklore, taboos, and rituals. Nõmm’s works are characterized by intimacy and the poetic exposure of corporeality, where pain thresholds and pleasure, softness and aggression, control and submission intersect.

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Her work examines the body as an archive—a site where physical and emotional experiences leave traces: abrasions, behavioral patterns, and reactions that shape our self-perception and relationships. She investigates how power dynamics manifest in intimate practices and how bodily vulnerability can transform into a source of strength. BDSM as a negotiated practice serves as a framework for rethinking control and submission—how pain, when structured through rules, can become an empowering experience.

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Through materials such as hair, textile, and metal, Nõmm explores societal structures that shape and restrict the body—whether through corsets, disciplinary practices, beauty standards, or architecture itself. Her work questions protection and constraint, self-determination and imposed boundaries, revealing the tension between safety and oppression, intimacy and distance.