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Sandy Rodriguez | |
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Born | 1975 (age 49–50) |
Sandy Rodriguez (born 1975 in National City, California) is an American interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, whose work explores cultural identity and socio-political history. Many of her pieces use natural pigments and natural materials.
She has exhibited in various major museums, including the Denver Art Museum, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Garden, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, MOCA Busan Busan Bienniale, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Art+Practice, and Self Help Graphics.
Her work focuses on the ongoing cycles of violence on communities of color by blending historical and recent events in the Los Angeles area and along south-west US-Mexico border. A goal of her work is to disrupt dominant narratives and interrogate systems that are ongoing expressions of colonial violence, including Customs Border Enforcement, Police, and Climate Change.
Rodriguez grew up on the United States–Mexico Border, including in Tijuana and San Diego.
Rodriguez earned her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the California Institute of Arts. [1] She also has designed many education programs for several art organizations dating back to 1988.
A transitional moment for Rodriguez happened in 2014 on a visit to Oaxaca, a southern Mexican state, where she first procured cochineal, a red pigment produced in the pre-Columbian era. Prior to this, Rodriguez had painted exclusively in modern paint. The encounter with cochineal happened while she was painting fire paintings, and during protests began in Ayotzinapa in response to forty-three missing college students. [2]
In 2024, Rodriguez debuted new work at the XYZ Gallery, focusing on themes of environmental justice.
The artist explains:
"The Codex Rodríguez–Mondragón (2017- ) is a collection of maps and specimen paintings about the ongoing cycles of violence on communities of color by blending historical and recent events. It incorporates hand-processed earth, plant, and insect based watercolor onto the sacred (and once outlawed) amate paper, reclaiming and reaffirming the Indigenous artistic traditions of the Americas. The use of plant materials is significant not only for situating the work within specific floristic provinces but also for their medicinal and healing properties. This makes my maps not simply a representation of the place but objects that serve as an active embodiment of their constituent parts. In my work, a multitude of records, documents, maps and natural materials serve to inform my interpretation of space where various histories are combined, juxtaposed, recovered, and re-envisioned, painted as a codex, a macro and micro view of humanity in relationship with land, time, and power. One of my personal goals is to disrupt western European dominant narratives and challenge audiences with paintings that interrogate legacies of colonial aggression in our daily lives.
My investigation into Indigenous color use in the Americas led me to research the 16th-century Florentine Codex and the history of image- and color-making in colonial Mexico. The Florentine Codex is a twelve-volume encyclopedia compiled by Fray Bernadino de Sahagun and several Indigenous writers and artists, known in Nahuatl as tlacuilos. Working during the middle of the 16th century, they created a compendium of “the things of New Spain,” with parallel Spanish and Nahuatl texts describing deities, plants, animals, and the history of the Spanish invasion in 1519-21. Over 2,000 images accompany these texts, providing a third layer of information.
It is important to mention that the Florentine Codex was created under a colonial regime at a time when their world was changing radically and, in part, under quarantine during the time of a pandemic that wiped out 90 percent of the population." [3]
In April 2022, Rodriguez participated in a three-week residency at Cornell University as part of the interdisciplinary project "From Invasive Others toward Embracing Each Other: Migration, Dispossession, and Place-Based Knowledge in the Arts of the Americas." Organized by professors Ella Maria Diaz, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, and Jolene K. Rickard, this project aimed to examine Latinx, Indigenous, and Chicanx histories through visual and performance arts. [4]
During her residency, Rodriguez led workshops, focusing on themes of nature, activism, and traditional bioregional art practices. [4] [5] These workshops allowed participants to engage with indigenous pigments and their historical significance. [5] Rodriguez demonstrated techniques for creating paints from natural materials, emphasizing sustainable practices and the importance of cultural heritage in artistic expression. [5] This approach not only educated participants about the ecological impact of their art but also about the intersection between community and environment. [5]
On April 28, 2022, Rodriguez delivered a keynote presentation at Cornell, discussing her artistic practice and the research underpinning her work with indigenous pigments. [4] In this presentation, she elaborated on her residency experience, highlighting her collaborations with students and the reciprocal learning that took place. [5] Rodriguez emphasized the power of art as a tool for social change and cultural dialogue, underscoring the relationships among art, culture, and activism. [5]
2023
2022
2021
2019
2018
Rodriguez's exhibition You Will Not Be Forgotten was held at the Charlie James Gallery from January 25 to March 7, 2020. [11] It was Rodriguez's first solo presentation at the gallery and featured an installation of works from her ongoing Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón project. [11]
Dedicated to the memory of seven Central American child migrants who died in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody during 2018 and 2019, the exhibition comprised twenty pieces, including portraits of the children and a large-scale map detailing the incidents across the U.S.-Mexico border. [11] [12] The installation also includes a visual recipe for healing "susto" or trauma, as derived from the colonial medicinal manuscript Codex de la Cruz-Badiano . [11]
Rodriguez employed traditional materials such as amate paper, used historically in Mexico to create codices, and utilizes Maya blue, a pigment created by ancient Maya artists, to symbolize the children’s cultural heritage. [12] The exhibition incorporates contemporary portraits of scholars and healers alongside the child portraits, reinforcing a narrative of cultural continuity and healing. [11] [12]
Rodriguez/Valadez in Vernon was an exhibition at Fine Art Solutions of paintings by Sandy Rodriguez and fellow Los Angeles artist John Valadez. [13] The show highlighted their perspectives on the city, often infused with dark humor and elements of the magical. Both artists utilized their works to comment on contemporary themes through a lens of cultural critique. [14] [13] Rodriguez’s works referenced painted colonial and pre-Columbian codices, presenting them in contemporary contexts. The exhibition was held in 2018 at Fine Art Solutions, located at 3463 E. 26th St., Vernon. [14] [13]
Her works are held in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; Cheech Marin's collection of Chicano art housed at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry in Riverside, California; [15] private and other collections.