The Apple

Presented as part of Art on the Hour on Barclays Center’s Oculus

Created specifically for the Barclays Center Oculus screen, The Apple draws inspiration from the pioneering surrealist films of Man Ray, whose works used dreamlike montage, unexpected juxtapositions, and symbolic imagery to disrupt conventional ways of seeing. Reinterpreting these strategies through the lens of contemporary image culture, Cwynar assembles a sequence of recurring motifs drawn from her broader body of work. The Apple features the artist’s longtime muse, Tracy Ma, alongside a constellation of objects sourced from footage produced for earlier films, including apples, perfume bottles, and clouds. In a dreamlike montage, these familiar images are detached from their original contexts and re-presented as symbols circulating through systems of desire, aspiration, and consumption.

Echoing Cwynar’s ongoing examination of how images accrue and lose meaning over time, the work foregrounds the seductive power of visual culture while revealing its constructed nature. By bringing together historical references to Surrealist cinema with contemporary commercial imagery, The Apple explores the ways images continually generate new associations, even as their original meanings fade.

About the Artist

Sara Cwynar (b. 1985, Vancouver, BC) lives and works in New York. Working across photography, film, and installation, she explores the circulation, accumulation, and reinterpretation of visual culture. For more than a decade, she has developed a distinct visual language that examines the influence of images in everyday life, drawing on both historical and contemporary commercial imagery. Her work reveals how the persuasive power of images diminishes over time and is replaced by accelerating cycles of consumption. Through these investigations, Cwynar considers the power structures embedded in visual culture and how ideas of freedom, agency, and identity are continually reproduced and reshaped over time.

Cwynar holds an MFA from Yale University and a BDes from York University. Current and past projects include presentations at the Performa Biennial, New York (2021), Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam (2023), ICA Los Angeles (2022), Remai Modern (2021),Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); and MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2015/16). Cwynar’s works are held in the collections of The MoMA, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; and the National Gallery of Canada, among others. In 2024 and 2025 she presented new solo exhibitions at 52 Walker in New York and ICA Boston in Boston, MA and received a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. In 2026 she will present new solo exhibitions at The Approach, London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, and Esther Schipper, Berlin.