about
Valley of the Possible, picture by Mirla Klein
Kyra Sacks (1989) is a visual artist, social anthropologist, and art educator based in Amsterdam. As a child she started with painting tulips in watercolour and grew into a cartographer of human experience. She sketches the stories others overlook: the quiet dignity of those displaced at fractured borders, the search for belonging in shifting landscapes, the lifelines etched into rocks in riverbeds. Her art is not ornamental but investigative, a way of knowing as much as showing. She brings this craft into all her projects, turning journeys of change into visual landscapes that participants can enter, inhabit, and re-shape. Her pieces hang in museums and archives, but her true gallery is the unfolding conversation — where drawing helps people see what they feel, and feel what they know. As tutor, researcher, and artist, she has made a life out of the delicate craft of giving shape to the intangible. She led research on displacement, belonging and social change using arts-based methods in both public and corporate sectors. Kyra has drawn the realities of migration for the International Committee of the Red Cross, and collaborated with organisations such as the Savory Institute, Ashoka, KPMG, DELA Funerals, VriendenLoterij Fonds and THNK School of Creative Leadership. Her artworks have found permanent homes in the collections of the Amsterdam City Archive, AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Sanquin and others. She exhibits her work with Gallery Fleur & Wouter in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
testimonies
“Je werk heeft vaak een weemoedig of melancholisch gevoel dat veroorzaakt wordt door de confrontatie met het onherroepelijke aan verandering. Jouw tekeningen lijken de grote onderwerpen een menselijke maat te geven, waardoor je je er als kijker mee kunt verbinden; kunst en wetenschap verstrengelen zich met elkaar.”
“Kyra brought her art mastery, her heart, her vast intuition and a unique ambidextrous, uncanny in-tune-ness to bare in an infinitely complex and trying assignment. She did not just deliver the basic agreement, she shaped and made the whole journey something it wasn’t before we brought her in. We depended on her in the best possible way. In the way partners should. Kyra is an artist and practitioner working courageously at the outer edges of her metier - understanding the full power of art as a force far greater than the performative.”
“She made things personal and subjective, and provided access to people’s lives, memories, dreams and routines, without turning things sentimental or merely appealing to compassion. (…) She manages to get close to people’s daily trivialities and ups-and-downs, and demonstrating how these make real lives – which is the best thing humanities or social sciences can do.”
“Kyra Sacks has more than an artists’ vision: she has a deep understanding of human behaviour and motivation. That’s what makes her drawings so multi-dimensional. They capture more than a moment. They resonate with the whole process, trigger memories, initiate conversations and move ideas forward.”
“Haar veelzijdigheid is haar kracht. Ze is in staat dingen ‘af te pellen’ en heel snel tot de kern te komen. En het dan zo te formuleren of te verbeelden dat anderen met haar mee kunnen. (…) wij ontdekken door met haar mee te gaan.”
“An exploration of the crossroads between graphic art, poetry and ethnography.”
“Ze is staat menselijk lijden op een tactiele manier te verbeelden.”