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Sarah Rosalena’s works commemorate LA River

Sarah Rosalena's works commemorate LA River
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March 2, 2023
in Artists, What’s on Your Loom
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Sarah Rosalena‘s recent works titled For Submersion recall the LA River’s importance by honoring its history as an ancestral pathway. The mediums used to create For Submersion highlight Rosalena’s attention to Los Angeles river’s evolution over time, honoring practices used in the past and present, she merges craft making and digital arts as a way to interpret and re-envision land.

For Submersion (textile)
Materials: Parachute cord, cotton yarn,
Dimensions: 44 x 114 inches
Woven on:  TC2 Jacquard Loom

For Submersion
Architecture foam, concrete
10 x 50 x 50 inches
Photos: Ian Byers-Gamber

Before settler colonization, LA State Historic Park was the floodplain of Paayme Paxaayt, the Los Angeles River, that supported Tongva people and wildlife. For Submersion recalls the LA River’s importance by honoring its history as an ancestral pathway. The mediums used to create For Submersion highlight Rosalena’s attention to Los Angeles river’s evolution over time, honoring practices used in the past and present, she merges craft making and digital arts as a way to interpret and re-envision land.

For Submersion is both a physical work and digital artifact, which aims to re-narrativize, through yarn painting, the river’s temporalities and historicity as a watershifter. Rosalena adorned a river rock from Paayme Paxaayt with Wixárika yarn painting, a method of image-making traditionally done with beeswax, pine sap, and handspun yarn that has been passed down in her family for generations. The yarn represents a throughline to mother earth and to the matrilineal bloodline of weavers in her family. The yarn painted rock was 3D scanned, then digitally fabricated into a physical sculpture that will collect and interact with rainwater. In addition, a large commissioned textile was handwoven as a companion piece using satellite imagery of historic courses of the Los Angeles River as a weaving pattern on a TC2 Jacquard loom. Works were woven with parachute cord to tell a story and material connection coming from the sky to earth.

“Sarah’s practice honors traditional craft through its digital manipulation, re-casting how we position Indigenous knowledge within our present and future. Her work elicits Native futurity, and explores the relationship between land, culture, natural resources, and the digital worlds we must inhabit,” says Clockshop Director Sue Bell Yank. “Her monumental river rock sculpture within LA State Historic Park is both a keystone for bridging multiple worlds, and a prayer for different, generative, and abundant modes of interacting with them.”

Central to this commission is a partnership with Chapter House, an Indigenous-led organization that provides space for Indigenous Peoples and allies to appreciate art, convene and collaborate, celebrate individual and shared Indigenous cultures, and explore the complexities of the 21st Century Indigenous experience. Chapter House and Rosalena will lead hands-on workshops for Native youth, engaging them with the land at LAHSP through craft and digital technology. Each workshop is designed to mirror the process for creating For Submersion, wherein technology functions as a means of digital preservation and archive for future generations.

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