Patience and Penitentia at Samstag Museum of Art

Patience and Penitentia is a new installation and durational performance by Berlin-based South Australian artist Ida Sophia, presented as part of the 2026 SALA Festival. The work explores the painful experience of relational withdrawal, examining the power dynamics, strategies of control and forms of punishment embedded in silence. More than 40 local women contributed thousands of rose petals and personal stories to the work. Over the course of the exhibition, Sophia will perform a participatory ritual with a select number of performers, incorporating sound, language, movement and gesture to publicly transfigure private suffering through collective release.