Sarah Rosalena Brady at Blum & Poe
By: Lindsay Preston Zappas
At Blum & Poe, a solo show by Sarah Rosalena Brady explores the artist’s Huichol and Laguna Pueblo heritage alongside ideas of sci-fi futurism, AI and technology, and post-apocalyptic survival. The exhibition is part of a new gallery initiative called Galleries Curate, and was organized by Mika Yoshitake. A series of Jacquard-woven (a computer-guided loom) tapestries, features satellite imagery which maps climate and water variations on Mars. The warm colors and inviting textures of each tapestry feel at odds with the abstract yet cosmic imagery that each contains. A series of ceramic works, also made with technological aid via 3D printer, explore Indigenous coiling techniques, although their “clay material” is in fact “Enhanced Mojave Mars Simulant 2 (MMS-2)” a chemical material that is produced to mimic Martian soil. By using spiritual and traditional vessel forms and blending them with a synthetic material, Brady points us to the past while cautioning towards the future—she points to the terrors of climate change and the human impulse to ignore ancient wisdom while inventing our way out of the crisis instead of confronting it head-on.