Sarah Rosalena is an artist and researcher who works in different fields. She wants to move beyond colonial stories by combining Native craft practises with technology from the future. Her use of different mediums and materials is influenced by her personal, cultural, and societal experiences, as well as her research into history and science. Rosalena’s new site-specific sculptural installation, For Submersion, located at LA State Historic Park, is a project of Clockshop in partnership with The Chapter House. The installation is a mixed media Wixárika yarn-painting on a river rock that has been 3-D scanned and digitally fabricated to create an anachronistic object that connects textile and tech-based art practices. Although the installation was delayed twice due to heavy rainfall, it ultimately served its function as a rainwater collector and floated in an area of the park designed to collect water and feed the aquifer.
Rosalena’s work extends beyond the earth and explores outer space. The Mt. Wilson Observatory will host her next show, Standard Candle, on May 6. It explores women’s labour and colonialism in the context of Western scientific theory and space imaging. The exhibition features woven and beaded textiles made using computer code and based on images captured by the famous telescope. Her interest in outer space is also reflected in her current exhibition at MOCA Santa Barbara, where she explores eight-pointed star motifs used in Wixárika patterns as a template for weaving images of stars in hybrid forms created by hand and software.
When asked about her work, Rosalena explains that her art deconstructs technology with material interventions, creating hybrid objects that function between human/nonhuman, ancient/future, handmade/autonomous, beyond power structures rooted in colonialism. She credits her love of weaving and embroidery, which she learned from her grandmother, and her passion for playing the violin as interconnected sources of inspiration for her work. Pointing Star at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara and Standard Candle with LACMA at Mount Wilson Observatory are two of Rosalena’s significant forthcoming solo shows. She chooses to live and work in L.A. because she was born and raised in Northeast L.A. and supports the Indigenous community there. Rosalena attended art school to become an art professor and pioneer computational craft.
