Previously on view September, 12-24, 2026 @ Saratoga Arts Center, Saratoga Springs
**This article originally appeared in our October 2026 issue**
Photos by Alison Bachorik
“I don’t want to do this in a vacuum. I have to do this in community…”
In John Berger’s 1972 book Ways of Seeing, he writes that, “The relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” Berger is touching on the ways in which the self and the outside world must live forever trapped in this weird little dance: between what we know intellectually, versus the illusions that we see playing out in the world. Artist and musician Sarah Pedinotti explores similar themes within her multimedia installation Youngworld: The Mantis Shrimp Matrix.
A Capital Region native, Pedinotti recently returned to the area after a decade in Brooklyn as well as a year’s stint in Thailand. September marked the exhibition’s first United States show since it first debuted at ATTA Gallery in Bangkok. Pedinotti crafts much of the physical materials for the show from recycled and ocean-bound materials.
The Saratoga Springs show’s iteration was named for a piece of trash Pedinotti found while sourcing materials with Greenpeace in Bangkok: a glass bottle with the label “Youngworld Baby.” The title evokes the idea that human beings, for all our supposed progress, remain the world’s “babies” for both our short time here — compared with the mantis shrimp’s 400-million-year existence — as well as our wasteful practices we have yet to learn from.
“I was just thinking about how young we are in comparison,” she reflects. “It got me thinking about the absurdity of how we’re at the center of our world and we built this world around us that we all agree upon is, in some ways, normal. But it so quickly destroys the habitats of these creatures and so many other creatures and plants… so, it’s not really just about the mantis shrimp, that was just the jumping off point. That was the catalyst.”
In terms of gathering materials used in the show, Pedinotti is humble in her approach. “I just fill up [my car] as much as I can with donations. If I have a specific vision, I’ll buy something on Facebook Marketplace and it’s always secondhand. Every single thing has a story; it all comes from something and gets reused.”
The surround-sound audio and video components are layered atop the sculptural recycled works, plopping the viewer into a playful, fishbowl-like environment. Her work brings to mind elements of two experimental performances near and dear to my heart: Isabella Rossellini’s series of short films, Green Porno — documentary-style performance art that details the freaky lives of insects (although, Pedinotti’s work is itself G-rated) — and Peewee’s Playhouse, with its zany and colorful lifesize puppet world.
For a portion of the show, the audience is invited to tap into their senses through a bit of on-screen guided meditation, channeling and probing deep inside one’s own imagination. The mantis shrimp is a creature whose eyesight remains one of the most extraordinary in the world, able to see colors and pick up on stimuli humans cannot imagine. And yet, humans can and do try to imagine that which we cannot directly experience.
What makes the show so immersive is that it encourages viewers to consider a world outside the one we’re all accustomed to and how other species (or perhaps other cultures, genders, ages, etc.) may experience life with a completely different set of eyes and tools. While Pedinotti is the mastermind behind the show’s vision, she also brings together live performances throughout the show’s run to play inside the installation, dubbed the Shrimp Eye Orchestra. Pedinotti describes the ease with which the upstate and NYC-based community of fellow artists and musicians embraced the idea.
“As far as the Shrimp Eye Orchestra, it happened pretty organically, [just by] being back in town and talking to different musicians and people who are reconnecting with our community up here. I was listening to Brian Eno talk about this word that he made up called ‘scenius.’ It’s like genius but for a scene, and he talks about how there is no genius without scenius... so I don’t want to do this in a vacuum. I have to do this in community, that’s why I’m doing it. “
Those who participated seem to abide by this same sentimentality.
“I performed guitar as part of a collaboration of 16 musicians of all ages and backgrounds — each representing the photoreceptors inside the mantis shrimp's eye,” says NYC-based musician Gina DeNardo, who participated in the Shrimp Eye Orchestra for the show’s second-day opening weekend.
“The experience was particularly special in that it was entirely improvised and many of the artists were meeting for the first time on the day of the performance. Imagine a group of musicians made up of folk, rock, punk, metal, jazz, experimental, country, ambient, etc., all in one room. It's a beautiful thing.”
At first blush, the mantis shrimp seems like a completely alien lifeforce in the face of our human-centric worldview. Yet its long tenure on earth as well as its unique abilities could be the perfect unassuming messenger to teach us about our own complexities and limitations. Pedinotti herself, in her dazzling head-to-toe mantis shrimp garb, reminds us to view the surrounding world beyond our own paradigms as best as (humanly) possible.
