Sarah Sense (b. 1980) lives and works in California. Sense has traveled extensively through the Americas, Europe, United Kingdom and Southeast Asia. Her landscape photography is an essential part of her travel and visual art practice. Sense’s weaving practice began in New York while a master’s student at Parson New School for Design (2003-2005). While director and curator of the American Indian Community House Gallery, New York, Sense catalogued the gallery’s thirty-year history, inspiring her search for Indigenous art internationally. Her world travels were charged with archive research, photo-weaving project that expanded to community programming, international Indigenous artist interviews and a book Weaving the Americas.
Artist Statement
Living and traveling through Europe, the United Kingdom, Southeast Asia and the Americas, has privileged me the opportunity of learning about contemporary Indigenous life and settler-colonial histories. With my landscape photography and familial weaving traditions, I re-envision basket patterning from my Chitimacha and Choctaw heritage by weaving photographs of maps, manuscripts and landscapes to tell stories of colonialism, resistance, and resilience. The act of cutting and weaving together old maps and new landscapes with traditional patterns re-indigenizes the landscapes while decolonizing maps.
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Birch Bark, 2022
Woven archival inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper, artist tape
26 1/2 x 26 1/2 in. (67.3 x 67.3 cm)
Framed: 28 1/4 x 28 1/4 inches
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Called by the Natives, 2022
Woven archival inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper, artist tape
40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm)
Framed: 44 1/2 x 44 1/2 inches
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Plan of Attack, 2022
Woven archival inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper
14 1/2 x 2 1/4 x 13 1/2 in. (36.8 x 5.7 x 34.3 cm)
Framed: 21 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Queens Most Excellent Majesty, 2022
Woven archival inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper
14 x 2 1/4 x 14 in. (35.6 x 5.7 x 35.6 cm)
Framed: 21 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Lone Ranger and Tonto with Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull, 2018
Woven archival inkjet print on bamboo paper, tape
32 x 48 in. (81.3 x 121.9 cm)
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Cowgirls and Cowboys with Ronald Reagan, 2018
Woven archival inkjet print on bamboo with rice paper and wax
32 x 48 in. (81.3 x 121.9 cm)
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
She’s Gonna Make It, 2018
Woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax
32 x 48 in. (81.3 x 121.9 cm)
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
heritage, 2017
Woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo paper and rice paper, wax, tape, acrylic paint
16 x 48 in. (40.6 x 121.9 cm)
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
strength, 2017
Woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo paper and rice paper, wax, tape, acrylic paint
16 x 48 in. (40.6 x 121.9 cm)
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense (b. 1980)
Remember 2, 2016
Arches watercolor paper, archival inkjet prints, bamboo paper, rice paper, tape, wax, graphite
45 x 30 in. (114.3 x 76.2 cm)
Signed on verso
Sarah Sense discusses her work in the "Speaking With Light" exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.
Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Ft. Worth, TX takes on the history of how photography was used on Native Americans and how its increasingly being used by Native Americans. It stands as one of the first major museum surveys exploring the practices of Indigenous photographers working today.
Sarah Sense employed a muted color palette, repetitive patterning, and echoes of the grid in the photographic weavings and photo-based baskets on view in Power Lines. Rooted in the traditional basket-weaving techniques of Sense’s ancestral Chitimacha and Choctaw tribes, her works explore North American indigenous cultures, land seizure, displacement, and Hollywood mythmaking.
Sarah Sense is a descendant of two Native American tribes (Chitimacha and Choctaw), a world traveller, and Eccles Centre Fellow. She uses Native weaving techniques to create artworks combining archival materials and landscape photography. With support from the Eccles Centre, she created Power Lines – a powerful series of work utilising colonial maps and letters found in the British Library’s Americas collection.
