ART OF INDIGENOUS FIBERS
SARAH SENSE
Biography
Sarah Sense creates photo-weavings with traditional Chitmacha and Choctaw techniques, her photography, and found imagery. Sense is from Sacramento, California and currently lives in Bristol, England. She received a BFA from School for Design, New York (2005). Sense was the curator/director of the American Indian Community House Gallery (2005-07) and catalogued the gallery’s history. This inspired her search for Indigenous international art, leading to life abroad when she moved to South America (2010) to research her first international project, a project which included over sixty interviews with Indigenous artists from twelve countries debuting in Valdivia, Chile (2011).
Artist Statement
Weaving photographs is my visual art practice; with photographic processes and cut paper, I have taught myself a weaving tradition of Chitimacha basket techniques, creating both flat mats and baskets to make social and political statements. Cowgirls and Indians is a fresh interpretation of a fourteen-year- old project, layering images from my collection, including: family photographs, Hollywood posters, antique posters, wild west show imagery, my Choctaw grandmother’s memoirs, Chitimacha landscapes, and my two personas: Cowgirl and Indian Princess. This body of work was originally explored in 2004, but with the recent American. political landscape, I have found a new relevance with the imagery, questioning uses and misuses of cowboys, Indians, guns, women being taken and stereotyping.