Newsroom: Columbus Museum of Art presents Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions on view at The Pizzuti starting September 9, 2023
Sarah Rosalena disrupts the politics of discovery by fusing traditional and Indigenous craft, astronomical data, and emerging technologies
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Thursday, August 17, 2023 — The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is pleased to present Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions, on view at Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti (The Pizzuti) from September 9, 2023–February 4, 2024. Bringing together several major bodies of work by the artist, in addition to new textiles and sculptures created specifically for the exhibition, In All Directions showcases Rosalena’s merging of Indigenous craft traditions with new media, resulting in profound visions for feminist and anti-colonial worldbuilding on a cosmological scale.
With over 35 works dating from 2019, the exhibition centers Rosalena’s investigations into scholarly and corporate narratives around space exploration and interplanetary colonization. Informed by the artist’s scientific and historical research, Rosalena’s works fuse ceramic, textile, and beadwork with artificial intelligence, satellite data and digital fabrication to confront the geopolitical effects of climate change, dispossession and extractive economies. Created with tools such as 3D ceramic printers and bead looms, all of the works on view are woven through various constellations of hand and machine.
“In All Directions creates expanding forms between Earth and Space by re-examining narratives of the past and imagining different futures that break the binary structures rooted in discovery,” said Rosalena. “As a weaver, I am shaped by the origins, character, and 3D assembly of weaving. My work deconstructs technology with material interventions, creating hybrid objects that function between human and nonhuman, ancient and future, handmade and autonomous, beyond power structures rooted in colonialism.”
These bodies of work address the overlooked yet interconnected histories of craft, labor, and emerging technologies, using various entanglements of human- and machine-made production to destabilize colonial ideologies and forge new modes for understanding geography, materiality, and our shared universe. The exhibition’s title, In All Directions, represents the boundlessness of the universe and the irrelevance of compass points in a space beyond measurement. It leans on the artist’s cartographic mastery to imagine different futures outside of recognized binary structures, offering new forms of knowledge production beyond Western epistemologies.
The series Transposing a Form (2020) results from Rosalena’s collaboration with researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, comprising 3D-printed ceramic sculptures constructed from clay simulating the soil on Mars, marrying Indigenous coil pot techniques with advanced research in material science and space architecture. In another 3D ceramic print series, Pointing Star (2023) works reference the eight-pointed star motif used in Wixárika patterns as an entrance into the infinite, examining the idea of glitch and rethinking geospatial edges.
Above Below (2020) uses a neural network trained on satellite data to model geological transformations of Mars over millions of years, envisioning the planet’s past and its potential future as influenced by human intervention. By using Jacquard looms to weave this AI-generated imagery, the resulting works are a series of large-scale tapestries that visualize the melting and terraforming of Mars on one side, with the reverse displaying the devastation of climate change on Earth.
In Standard Candle (2021–2023), Rosalena examines the role of women’s labor and colonialism in the advancement of Western scientific thought, featuring woven and beaded textiles based on photographic plates from the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Drawing upon Indigenous beadwork techniques and the gendered histories of craft as a discipline, Rosalena forges juxtapositions which highlight the dispossessive practices that have supported developments in astronomy and planetary science. In addition, the works respond to the erasure of the women “computers” whose calculations supported scientific advancement in the 1920s and enabled Edwin Hubble to prove the existence of the universe beyond the Milky Way galaxy.
Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions is a collaboration between the CMA and the Department of History of Art at The Ohio State University. Organized by professor Kris Paulsen, the exhibition is the collective effort of her 2022 curatorial practice seminar students: Maika Kagawa Bahr, Christine Fashion, Julia Harth, Mia Kivel, Hannah McCasland, Sterling Nix, April Riddle and Amanda Tobin Ripley.
“Sarah Rosalena’s seductive, ambiguous objects appear to be simultaneously traditional and futuristic, handmade and autonomous, organic and artificial, earthly and otherworldly. She works in the blurred boundary between these binaries, showing that they are not just the arbitrary divisions that maintain oppressive structures and values, but that they also foreclose other ways of seeing the world and our entanglements within it,” said Paulsen. “Working on this exhibition and catalog have been foundational and transformative experiences for the student curators and for me as well. We look forward to sharing In All Directions with the community.”
Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions is supported through a Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Community Engagement Grant from The Ohio State University, a Craft Research Fund Exhibition Grant from the Center for Craft, a Ronald and Deborah Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award and an Arts and Humanities Community Engagement Grant from The Ohio State University’s College of Arts and Sciences.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog containing writing by the students and contributions by anthropologist Dr. Elizabeth Povinelli and geographer Dr. Kathryn Yusoff.
Exhibition Details
Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions
On View at the Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti
632 Park St, Columbus, OH 43215
September 9, 2023–February 4, 2024
Visitor Hours:
Fri–Sun: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM
Mon–Thurs: Closed
About Sarah Rosalena
Sarah Rosalena (Wixárika) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Los Angeles. She is an Assistant Professor of Computational Craft and Haptic Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Rosalena is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, the LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant, the Steve Wilson Award from Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize, the Artadia Award and the Craft Futures Fund Grant from the Center for Craft. Recent solo exhibitions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) at Mount Wilson Observatory, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Clockshop and Blum & Poe Gallery. Her textiles and ceramics are in the collection of LACMA.
About Columbus Museum of Art
CMA is where creativity and the daily life of its community intersect and thrive, as the Museum champions new and different ways of thinking and doing. CMA celebrates the creative process and sets the stage for people to experience art, ideas and relationships that spark creativity and nurture collective, courageous imagination.
CMA’s collection includes outstanding late 19th- and early 20th-century American and European modern works of art, grounded in the Ferdinand Howald and the Howard D. and Babette L. Sirak Collections. The Museum houses the world’s largest collections of works by beloved Columbus-connected artists Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Elijah Pierce and George Bellows and acclaimed collections such as The Photo League and the Philip J. and Suzanne Schiller Collection of American Social Commentary Art. The recently established Scantland Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art also continues CMA’s dedication to showcasing the art of our time.
The Greater Columbus Arts Council, Nationwide Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Paul-Henri Bourguignon and Erika Bourguignon Fund for Visual Arts and Richard H. and Ann Shafer funds with the assistance of the Ingram-White Castle Foundation of The Columbus Foundation provide ongoing support.
About Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti
Founded by Ron and Ann Pizzuti in 2011, the Pizzuti Collection was a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that operated as a museum. In January 2019, 40 artworks from the Pizzuti Collection and the building itself were gifted to the Columbus Museum of Art, creating the Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti (The Pizzuti). Building upon Ron and Ann Pizzuti’s enduring commitment to supporting contemporary artists from across the globe, The Pizzuti continues to serve as a vibrant center for contemporary art in Central OH. The Columbus Museum of Art actively curates and hosts contemporary exhibitions and programs within this space each year.
Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti is open Friday through Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. General admission is $5. The Short North has multiple parking garages as well as metered street parking. Public transportation available via COTA; the #2 bus stops on High & Russell Streets one block away. Tickets and updates are available at columbusmuseum.org.
