Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar is a contemporary artist based in New Jersey. Her evocative and emotionally charged artworks explore the primitive aspects of human existence and their connection to modern life. Drawing inspiration primarily from self-portraits, Sauerteig-Pilaar uses the female form as her muse to express the quiet rage simmering within women. Her work delves into the darker corners of society, seeking out the unifying threads of feminism and illuminating the unspoken struggles and betrayals faced by women today.
Her practice has expanded to include large-scale installations that confront urgent global issues, such as climate change and humanitarian crises. These installations serve as both a visual and visceral call to action, compelling audiences to engage with the realities that demand attention.
Sauerteig-Pilaar earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design in 1993. After living in New York City, she relocated to New Jersey, where her continuous experimentation with various media led to the distinctive mixed-media paper constructions for which she is best known. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationwide. In 2022, she was awarded the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation residency in Jersey City, NJ, and a resident at Special Project Residency 14C (2025) in Jersey City, NJ during 2025.
Artist Statement
My work begins in the body, my body, as both subject and instrument of truth. I have birthed and nursed, broken and healed, disregarded and embraced this flesh. It has bled, endured, and endured again. Through years of self-portraiture in charcoal and paint, I came to understand the body not as a private thing, but as a form of communication: primal, political, and shared.
From that personal reckoning, a universal woman emerged in my work. She is fierce and mature, unpolished in her confrontation. She does not withstand politely. She carries within her the seeds of change, not fresh blossoms, but vital ones still. She is every woman who has been silenced, overlooked, or made to disappear, and she refuses.
Over time, that refusal expanded beyond the female form and into the world itself. I began working with donated and recycled sewing pattern papers, tissue-thin relics from mid-century domestic life, fragile by nature, stronger when sewn together. In their fragility I found metaphor: for women’s bodies, for memory, for communities under threat, for a planet we are failing to protect.
My recent large-scale installations place these panels in dialogue with the elements and with the public. In Phase 1, hand-painted gouache panels depicting urgent silent gestures, the ASL sign for “Help” and the three-part signal used by victims of trafficking, were suspended between trees for thirty days. Designed to deteriorate, they were instead transformed by wind in a season of drought, animated like prayer flags carrying messages across the landscape. Now indoors, their battered surfaces still cry out. They refuse silence.
The sewing patterns persist throughout this work as both material and meaning. They show a plan. Sewn together, they grow stronger. Left exposed to the elements, they will ultimately disintegrate, as all things do, as women are told they do, as ecosystems do when ignored. Their disappearance is part of the message. What remains, after the work is gone, is the memory of what was urgent and what we chose to do about it.
CV
Born 1971 Pompton Plains, NJ Lives and works in Oak Ridge, NJ
Solo Shows:
2025
“Reflecting Refuge” Maplewood Arts and Culture Gallery 1978 Maplewood, NJ
“Phase II” Visual Arts Center Summit, NJ
2024
“To Bare Witness” The Center for Contemporary Art Bedminster, NJ
Installation “Phase 1” Whittemore CCC Oldwick, NJ
Group Shows:
2025
Of Myth and Men Watchung Arts Center Watchung, NJ
2024
Bridging Nature WhittemoreCCC Oldwick, NJ
The Art of Fiber Orange Delaware Water Gap, PA
2023
Visceral Bodies Gallery Aferro Newark, NJ Curator: Juno Zago
BLOOM Gallery Aferro’s 20th Anniversary Benefit Gallery Aferro Newark, NJ
International Juried Exhibition The Center for Contemporary Art Bedminster, NJ Curator: Estaban del Valle
60th Annual Juried Competition Masur Museum Monroe, LA
Winner: Second Prize Curator: Jovanna Venegas, Assistant Curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
2022
Art Fair 14C: Showcase Exhibition Jersey City Armory, Jersey City, NJ
Members Show Hunterdon Art Museum Winner: Hunterdon Art Museum Prize Clinton, NJ Juror: Lewis Wexler (Wexler Gallery)
New Jersey Arts Annual: Reemergance New Jersey State Museum Curator: Sarah B. Vogelman selected piece “Untitled 3”
2021
ThroughLines Indianapolis Art Center Indianapolis, IN Selected Piece: “Untitled 2”
ReWriting Herstory: Women Who Excel In Sports And The Written Word Drawing Rooms Jersey City, NJ Selected Work: “Portrait of Anne Sexton”
Prayers For The Pandemic Project Drawing Rooms Jersey City, NJ Selected Work: “Prayer Flags”
Womyn’s Werk Studio Montclair Gallery Curator: Donna Kessinger Selected piece “Klutch”
2020
ViewPoints 2020 Studio Montclair Gallery Montclair, NJ Curator: Virginia Fabbri Butera, PhD Selected piece “Tempest”
Art in Cadence Dineen Hull Gallery at HCCC Jersey City. NJ Selected piece “Primal Squeeze”
ArtFair 14C Juried Show Jersey City. NJ Selected piece “Power Struggle”
2016
39th Hilltop Country Day School’s Art Exhibit and Sale Sarta, NJ
Fall Juried Exhibition Barn Gallery at the Ringwood Manor Exhibited Piece “Red Sandstone Mountains”
2015
Seventh Annual Figurative Drawing and Painting Competition and Exhibition Lore Degenstein Gallery , Susquahanna, PA Selected piece “Sleeping Beauty”
Landscapes 2015 Online Art Exhibition Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery Exhibited piece “Wallich Field”
2014
Annual National Juried Art Exhibition 41 Artists from 14 States The Academy of Fine Arts, Lynchburgh,VA Juror: Elise Schweitzer Exhibited piece “O Fish ‘O Happiness, I purge Thee”
Sixth Annual Figurative Drawing and Painting Competition and Exhibition Lore Degenstein Gallery , Susquahanna, PA Exhibited Piece “The Land of Cockaigne”
2013
National Juried Online Exhibit Linus Gallery “Nature Speaks” Linus Gallery Exhibited piece “What?What?What?”
National Juried Art Exhibition The Ann White Academy Gallery, Lynchburg VA Juror: David Dodge
Collecting Art: An Affordable Art Fair , Juried Montclair Art Museum, Monclair, NJ
Residencies:
2025
Special Project 14C 150 Bay Street Jersey City, NJ
2022
Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Residency Mana Contemporary Jersey City, NJ
Publications:
McCall, Tris “Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar’s Reflecting Refuge makes a humanitarian statement” NJARTS.net September 3, 2025
“Meet Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar” CanvasRebel.com Stories & Insights June 5, 2025
McCall, Tris “Splendid Art at the 14C Special Project Residency” Jersey City Times April 12, 2025
McCall, Tris “Garden State Art Weekend Preview 11 Must See Exhibitions” NJARTS.net April 17, 2024
Rockwell, Chris Soup Can Magazine Issue #9 April 2023
Anania, Billie “The New Jersey Art Fair You Didn’t Know About” Hyperallergic Nov 11, 2022