Photo by Aubrie Pick
Artist Statement
Mark Baugh-Sasaki is a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary artist whose work explores our relationship to place through layered narratives embedded in both natural and built environments. His practice investigates how cultural, historical, and geological forces shape our perception of landscape and, in turn, how those landscapes shape our understanding of ourselves.
Through photography, sculpture, and site-based installations, Baugh-Sasaki interrogates the ways we define and interpret "nature." He challenges binary distinctions between the natural and the constructed, emphasizing that what we perceive as “wild” or “untouched” is often filtered through cultural values and learned assumptions. Landscape is not an external backdrop, but a dynamic site of human experience, memory, and transformation.
In recent work, he has turned his attention to geology as a framework for understanding our place in time and space—examining how rock formations, erosion, and the slow processes of the Earth serve as silent witnesses to human impact. By repeatedly returning to specific locations over time, he documents the visible effects of climate change, uncovering both loss and resilience in shifting terrains. These changes challenge his own attachment to familiar places, prompting deeper questions: Can damaged landscapes be restored? What does healing look like in a world so vastly changed by humans? And how must our perceptions evolve if we are to maintain meaningful connections to place?
Photo by Aubrie Pick
About the Artist
Mark Baugh-Sasaki is based in San Francisco and is an interdisciplinary artist whose art practice focuses on our connection to place through embedded narratives in both the built and the natural landscape. He received his BFA in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University and his MFA in 2017 from Stanford University. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been on display at the Autry Museum of the American West and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2024 he was the inaugural visiting artist fellow for the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He has been a resident at Headlands Center for the Arts and an Honorary James Irvine Fellow at Djerassi Resident Artist Program. His work is included in public collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cantor Art Center, Recology Artist in Residence Program, and the University of San Francisco. He is currently represented by San Francisco gallery re.riddle.