The Mark

Inscriptions

Signed and dated on recto Signed, titled, and dated on verso

Label

Sarah Sense makes intricate artworks by weaving digital photographs and archival materials into traditional Chitimacha and Choctaw basket designs. The Mark uses maps from the Geological Investigation of Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River, a project led by Harold Fisk in 1944 that charted the tributaries and currents of the Mississippi River in the interests of damming them to alter the river’s path. Using a pattern that recalls the insides of a muscadine grape, Sense creates a dissonant cartography of place, rendering Fisk’s map illegible to the viewer. According to Sense, her intervention upon this map is grounded in the reclamation of Indigenous place through a “process of decolonization that disassembles the names and meanings that were forced upon [it] through colonization.”

From the 2024 exhibition [Un]Mapping: Decolonial Cartographies of Place, curated by Beatriz Yanes Martinez, Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow, Curatorial and Exhibitions

Course History

Anthropology 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Charis Boke, Summer 2024

Exhibition History

[Un]Mapping: Decolonial Cartographies of Place, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 8 -November 3, 2024.

Provenance

Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2023.

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Subjects