Sarah Sense (b. 1980), Trade and Navigation, 2022

Written by Nina Rivera
Copyedited by Chloë Rain
Photo Edited by Yanting Chen

Subverting stereotypical depictions of Native histories within America, Sarah Sense recontextualizes her indigenous heritage in Power Lines, presented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery. Her series showcases hand-made two-dimensional photo weavings as well as three-dimensional baskets coined as “photo-baskets” by the gallery. Gaining inspiration from her own Chitimacha and Choctaw family, Sense fuses their traditional weaving techniques with photography as a way to demonstrate the working relationship between creation and appropriation.

The pieces themselves are multi-layered both in material and intention. As stated by the press release, Sense has integrated visuals such as her own landscape photography, prosaic portrayals of Native people in Hollywood, representations of American historical figures relevant to Native pasts, and maps from world-renowned archives. Specifically, each work includes remade North American maps, pertinent manuscripts, and colonial letters to the British monarchy.

Sarah Sense (b. 1980), Entering In, 2022

The story-telling woven into these textured photos is a dark and destructive one. Patterns laid out of gorgeous land, sky, and Indigenous peoples are structurally interrupted by the harsh documents and maps of the Americas. It is this physical obtrusion that highlights the colonization of land and the slowly disintegrating culture of Native communities due to enforced assimilation.

However, Sense has managed to fluidly represent the strength of her Native ancestry in these careful craftings. In a piece like Four Kings, the documentation attempts to overpower its constraints with handwriting scrawled horizontally across. Sense’s entwining of landscape imagery creates a stunning pattern in between the letters, showcasing the resilience of Native communities across the United States. In another weaving, Entering In, it’s almost impossible to discern where the appropriated manuscripts start and where the landscapes end. All that is visible is the sprawling tree line and imposing mountains, symbolizing the deeply rooted cultures of Indigenous peoples that can never be shaken.

Amongst these detailed weavings are two recurring personas of Sense’s, the Cowgirl and the Indian Princess. According to the gallery, these figures are commentary on Native interpretation in film, fashion, decor, and education within American popular culture since the 19th century. She mentions associating both personas with her own duality of being raised by a Native mother and a non-Native father. Those conflicting identities radiate from each piece, and yet Sense has remarkably braided them so completely into each other that they feel as one.

In a press release statement, Sense enlightens, “The Cowgirl and Indian Princess play with these complicated feelings, becoming more emotionally evoking when woven into Hollywood film posters. Weaving such identity politics through ancestral land then ties the figures to place. Adding the maps through the landscapes and figures suggests memory bound to blood and water but manipulated with popular culture’s interpretation of Native identity.”

While Power Lines is directly referencing the constantly-moving borders of land that Native communities were uprooted from, Sense revitalizes the phrase with her weaving techniques. Intertwining these photographs of true Chitimacha and Choctaw land on bamboo and rice paper generate impressive patterns, but the pieces themselves are sustained by powerful and sturdy lines. Thus, these Power Lines are not only representative of devastating erasure of Native culture. Instead, they are the traditions of a community that has continued to prevail throughout an oppressive American history. Hopefully, the work of Sarah Sense and other emerging Native artists can be a bastion for Native representation in visual art across the country.

Power Lines open Thursday, September 22, with a reception for the artist from 6 - 8 PM at Bruce Silverstein Gallery, 529 West 20th Street 3rd Floor, New York, NY, 10011.