Clockshop: Sarah Rosalena, For Submersion, Los Angeles State Historic Park (Chinatown)
Clockshop, in partnership with Los Angeles State Historic Park, announces a new artist commission from LA artist Sarah Rosalena, For Submersion. This temporary public artwork will be installed, and if rainfall permits, submerged, at the Los Angeles State Historic Park watershed from January 15, 2023 – May 28, 2023.
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 will be handwoven as a companion piece, and will use satellite imagery of the Los Angeles River as a weaving pattern.
“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 The Chapter House, an Indigenous-led arts organization that provides space for Indigenous Peoples and allies to appreciate art and celebrate individual and shared Indigenous cultures, and explore the complexities of the 21st Century Indigenous experience. In the arts workshop series Weaving the Park, Clockshop collaborated with The Chapter House and Rosalena to lead hands-on workshops for inter-tribal Indigenous youth, engaging them with the land at LAHSP through Native 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. Learn more about Weaving the Park here.
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