Arch, Mound, Basket:
Christine Howard Sandoval and Livable Abstraction in Indigenous California
Jessica L. Horton
Professor | Native American, Modern, and Contemporary Art
In 2019, the artist Christine Howard Sandoval (Chalon Indian Nation) began making large-scale drawings and sculptures from adobe mud. These works study how California Native arts, such as basketry and earthworks, inflect mission architectures. This talk situates her work within a broader global effort to reconstruct and reenergize Indigenous genealogies of abstraction. Howard Sandoval’s project asks us to extend beyond modernism, touching ancient practices of weaving and amalgamation that draw art and Earth back together. Conceived as an interlacing of materials and referents, with spaces to flex and breathe, abstraction in this lineage is a guarantor of plentitude. It invests in the continuation of abundant life against the odds.
Lecture followed by reception.
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