Sara Jimenez: the story never stops beginning or ending

As a diasporic Filipinx-Canadian artist, Sara Jimenez works in sculpture, collage, and performance. She explores deep transcultural memories and creates narratives around origins, home, loss, and absence. 

In the story never stops beginning or ending, curated by Sarah Freeman, Jimenez creates a site-specific installation responding to the monument of two steel Krupp guns displayed on the lawn of the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier. These guns were taken from the Spanish cruiser Castilla, which Admiral George Dewey’s squadron struck during the Spanish-American War’s Battle of Manila Bay in 1898. The guns are relics of conquest: symbols of American victory, but also emblems of the machinery that enabled colonial expansion. 

Jimenez’s installation serves as a counter-memorial—a space that honors marginalized Filipino women who lived during the Spanish-American War. With figurative ceramic sculptures, Jimenez pays homage to guardians, fighters, and caregivers who are lesser known in mainstream history. She blurs boundaries between geography, humanity, and forces constructed by the people in power who narrate the past.