SAHAR CARTER

Sahar Carter (b. 2000) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and sculptor of the Black Atlantic. Hailing from both coasts of the United States and ancestrally rooted in Jamaica and Virginia, they are currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Carter is pursuing a Master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand, with support from the Fine Arts Department toward the completion of their thesis. Their work exists at the intersection of folklore and critical theory, drawing inspiration from Audre Lorde's concept of biomythography. Across sculpture and writing, they engage questions of love, historical memory, and the psychological undercurrents of racism as they manifest in and through the body.

Through the narrativization of materials, Carter often draws critical parallels between the objectification of Black and multiply marginalized people and that of the objects these communities have historically stewarded. Their practice embraces contradiction and complexity, exploring emotional, political, and historical tensions through material form.

A trained and certified carpenter and metalworker, Carter represents the fourth generation in their family lineage to work with wood and metal. This inherited relationship to craft informs their engagement with materials such as bone, copper, sugarcane, and whatever else becomes necessary to the demands of a given work.

Their critical writing has appeared in The Kitchen Magazine, Black Intellectual Praxis Journal, and publications affiliated with the University of the Witwatersrand's Critical Apartheid Studies Department. Their poetry has been featured in collections including The Abyssal Zone: The WEF Nexus and Climate Change in South Africa, Oye Zine: Black Lesbian Archives, and From the Homies With Love, as well as across numerous live performance spaces and open mics.

Carter's performance work has been presented at The Gay and Lesbian Center (New York, USA), the Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall (South Africa), and on DStv through Poets Against Genocide. Their sculptural work has been exhibited at Co-Prosperity Gallery, Bard College, and American Steel Studios in the United States.