Sandra de la Loza
I am Sandra de la Loza, an artist, educator and activist whose family roots go back in this land we call LA longer than I know. Contending with and transforming intergenerational trauma generated by the ecological and social violences produced by patriarchal, settler colonialist, capitalist expansion, is at the heart of my life’s work. Within my own family this has shown up as addiction, a lot of premature deaths, incarceration, and enforced heteronormative and gendered roles that produce uneven patterns of emotional labor.
Wellness for me is an inward and outward process that I cultivate through both collective action and spending a lot of time with myself- sitting, listening and tending to what is personally, physically, politically, socially difficult and uncomfortable- - what I call entering the void.
The spaces that haunt, that are difficult to name are often the starting points for both my healing and artistic practices. This work, although slow and difficult, has been the most rewarding and transformative; opening unforeseen portals that lead to new terrains worlds and reveal other cosmologies. It is where I’ve experienced the most radical and generative change, taken the greatest leaps, and from which I have emerged with tools that continue to help me navigate life’s challenges and difficulties.
I consider myself an artist with a small “a” meaning that I’m more interested in participating and co-creating collective spheres for creativity, experimentation, mutual support, and camaraderie than pursuing hierarchical understandings of Art that exalt individuals. We are at a critical historic juncture through which we have the opportunity of letting go of what doesn’t serve us and create new models. How will we emerge from this historic moment? Now is the time to plant the seeds to cultivate other ways of living, being, communing, other cosmologies to guide our dreams and actions.
Here I share some images from a recent project: To Oblivion! The Speculator’s Eden- a project that honors the ghosts, the gaps, the voids, the erasures resulting from colonial settler capitalist expansion into this land we call Los Angeles. Researching, collecting, creating and performing what I call archival poems with shadow puppets, phantasmagoria, and remixed archival material. This project digs into the past in order to envision our future.
Under quarantine, I’ve really enjoyed the on-line generosity and the continued on the ground work people have been sharing..,too many to list, but I’d like to give some special shout outs to:
#reclaimla #eycej #dancindiaspora #justbreathehealing
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7Artist Bio:
Sandra de la Loza is a Los Angeles based artist who creates open-ended, research-based frameworks to guide inquiries that include visual, experimental, social and pedagogical components. Working as a performative archivist, she moves critically from and in between the institutional and the social occupying a variety of sites to interrogate underlying power dynamics and knowledge production through history and memory. Her work has been exhibited in major museums, alternative art spaces and community centers within the United States, Latin America and Europe. She has co-created autonomous spaces for artistic production, community action and critical dialogue that center the voices and history of people of color including Arts in Action (2000-2004), Decolonize LA (2016-2017) and at land’s edge (2016-2018).