Sarah Zapata (b. 1988, Corpus Christi, TX) employs weaving, tufting and traditional craft techniques to create loud, architecturally responsive installations that traverse themes of gender, colonialism and fantasy. Zapata’s site-specific works reflect her intersecting identities as a queer woman of Peruvian heritage raised in Evangelical South Texas and now based in New York.

“Beneath the breath of the sun” features newly created works completed during the artist’s residency with CALA Alliance in Fall 2023. Alongside these works, Zapata chose ceramics made with clay and earthen materials from the Museum’s collection to reference the land. The installation evokes a topography of the Arizona landscape, where bold hues of orange and yellow nod toward the punishing sun and air of the desert, weaving together the ecological and geological aspects that make up the complexity of our place.

A focal point of “Beneath the breath of the sun” is a series of columns that emerge from the ceiling and sprout from the floor within an immersive environment of alternating stripes. The inclusion of this pattern underscores the othering of people across history and geography; from the biblical period, when striped clothing signaled those to avoid, to more contemporary uses such as the US flag and the jail stripe. A series of tufted faces, responding to the ceramics displayed in the adjoining gallery, are draped over fallen columns, suspended from above, or stare up at viewers from below.

The built structures, striped or wrapped in braided textiles, echo the architecture found throughout the Museum. Zapata has painstakingly woven upcycled yarns and fabrics onto panels to elicit a familiarity with materials as the viewer walks through the manufactured colonnade. What memories or feelings come up for you as you walk through the columns? How are these fabrics familiar to you? Taken as a whole, Zapata’s fabricated world highlights the inherent friction between traditional modes of making in untraditional situations.

“Sarah Zapata: Beneath the breath of the sun” is organized by ASUAM Senior Curator Alana Hernandez, with CALA Alliance Curatorial Assistant Sade Moore and made possible by generous funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Ford Foundation. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with a Community of Practice composed of Dagoberto Bailón, Co-Founder of Trans Queer Pueblo; Dr. Marivel Danielson, Associate Professor, School of Transborder Studies, Arizona State University; and Raquel Gutiérrez, writer and educator.