We’re grateful to all our friends and supporters who came out to celebrate the Museum reopening in January, and to visit us over the past three months. Big thanks for your belief in our potential and for your trust of our stewardship of this important community and regional resource. There’s more to come!

You are invited to visit us this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, 12 – 4pm as we close our current exhibitions. We could not be more thrilled to have been able to share Spenser James’ documentary short Connected By Water in our Lobby Gallery, and most recently on view Antonio Pichilla? Quiacai?n’s video Tejiendo El Paisaje in our Video Gallery. Join us for the last chance to view these powerful works in person at the Museum.

Seaea, by David Horvitz, will remain on view in the Window Gallery. The neon text, and visual poem, may also be seen in the current issue of Santa Barbara Magazine, and a similar neon artwork is currently featured in the new feature film Inside.

Museum visitors first encountered the works of Pichilla? Quiacai?n during the 2017 exhibition Guatemala from 33,000 km: Contemporary Art, 1960–Present, the Museum’s contribution to the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative. Since this time, the artist’s works have been exhibited extensively, and are now in the permanent collections of the Museo Reina Sofia, Tate Modern, Denver Art Museum, and Kadist Art Foundation, among others. In his meditative short video Tejiendo El Paisaje (Weaving The Landscape), the artist is seen weaving massive bolts of colored fabric, yellow, red, black, and white, amongst dead tree trunks on the banks of Lake Atitlán in his community of San Pedro La Laguna. These colors are foundational to the Maya cosmology, and representative of the cardinal directions. Created during the 2020 global pandemic, the video also documents an eerily peaceful lake, devoid of the typical daily, tourist, and commercial traffic that has since resumed, sublimely capturing this unforgettable moment in time. We look forward to continuing to follow the artist’s trajectory.

On view: April 16 – July 30, 2023
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 16, 12pm – 4pm

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara
653 Paseo Nuevo, Upper Arts Terrace
Santa Barbara

Sarah Rosalena: Pointing Star is the debut museum solo exhibition by the artist.

Sarah Rosalena (Wixárika, b. 1982, Los Angeles) is Assistant Professor of Art at UC Santa Barbara in Computational Craft and Haptic Media. Her work deconstructs technology with material interventions, creating new narratives for hybrid objects that function between human/nonhuman, ancient/future, handmade/autonomous to override power structures rooted in colonialism. She has received awards from Artadia, Creative Capital, the LACMA Art + Tech Lab Grant, Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, the Steve Wilson Award from Leonardo, the International Society for Art, Sciences, and Technology, and the Craft Futures Grant from Center for Craft. She has presented her work and research at places such as LACMA, Blum & Poe Gallery, Frieze LA, New Wight Gallery, and Ars Electronica. Her solo exhibition For Submersion, with Clockshop, is currently on view at Los Angeles Historic Park. Upcoming solo exhibitions include LACMA/Mount Wilson Observatory and Sarah Rosalena: In All Directionsat the Columbus Museum of Art. Her work is in the permanent collection at LACMA.

Image: Sarah Rosalena, Spiral Arm, 2023, hand-dyed cochineal wool yarn, black cotton yarn, 33 x 41 inches. Courtesy the Artist.