Sandy Rodriguez : Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón

Through her bioregional maps and paintings, Los Angeles-based artist Sandy Rodriguez performs her own Reconquista of the territories violently taken by European settlers five hundred years ago. With her extensive research of pre-colonial and colonial pigments and mapping techniques, and her use of native plants and earth dyes on amate paper (made from wild fig tree bark), Rodriguez foregrounds indigenous knowledge and bridges cross-temporal senses of space to respond to crises plaguing the region today, including migration, displacement, and climate change. Todd Wingate, curator of this catalog’s accompanying exhibition, states that Rodriguez "reclaim[s] the ancient tradition of recording knowledge through painting" and "in the process, she decolonizes our past, offering hope for our present and a more just future for the Americas." This catalog was made possible by the Riverside Art Museum and James Irvine Foundation.