We Carry the Land
Designed by Celina Brownotter, Anjelica S. Gallegos, Freeland Livingston, Selina Martinez, Bobby Joe Smith III, and Zoë Toledo
Materials & Applications
5814 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles
May 26–September 8, 2024
Within an urban courtyard along Wilshire Boulevard in Mid-City, Los Angeles, framed between brick, steel, glass, and concrete, a circular space is defined by a cylindrical cream-colored curtain. A lattice arbor hangs above, and an adobe bench sits below, angled to shoulder against the street with its opening facing inward into the site. Pine, cottonwood, cattails, tule reeds, and other plants are cradled by the lattice. Both canvas and earthen circles sit within (and are composed against) another circle previously inscribed by the revolving door of a building that no longer exists. A white metal structure runs a curtain up the length of the courtyard to connect tangentially with this circular space, curling into itself like a fiddlehead fern. Raw canvas—adorned with jingle dress cones and beads—becomes partition, projection surface, and enclosure as the curtain slides along the track to shape and reshape this place. Polychromatic floral glyphs stenciled onto concrete fill the ground plane between the curtain, the existing wooden bench, and a concrete party wall. Across the street, three fiberglass woolly mammoths are partially submerged in the natural asphalt, staged in a perpetual moment of terror in the La Brea Tar Pits.
We Carry the Land is the collective temporal and spatial vision of six emerging Native architectural and graphic designers: Celina Brownotter (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe), Anjelica S. Gallegos (Santa Ana Pueblo | Jicarilla Apache Nation), Freeland Livingston (Diné | Navajo), Selina Martinez (Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Xicana), Bobby Joe Smith III (Black and Indigenous | Hunkpapa and O’ohenumpa Lakota), and Zoë Toledo (Diné Asdzáán, Navajo Nation). The exhibition was presented by Materials & Applications (M&A) in the M&A x Craft Contemporary Courtyard. In addition to the temporary installation, the designers co-created moments in time, including programming ranging from adobe brickmaking and plastering workshops to a three-part series of conversations encompassing themes of “Reorienting, Extending, and Futuring.”
Over the last year, the collective drew upon the expansive diversity represented within their group—citizenship and community, intersecting knowledge systems, relations to many lands and waters, current geographies, and design practices. As Bobby Joe Smith III articulated, the central theme that emerged through their collaboration was the exploration of “what it means to contribute work to the built environment as an Indigenous person working on non-ancestral lands…to be Native and diasporic, to hold two seemingly paradoxical positions simultaneously…[and] to engage with and contribute to the world from a place of indigeneity rather than as a settler.”
The six designers put these intentions into practice in each element of the exhibition, carrying and reflecting the cultural specificity of their own communities and heritages. Combining this with their individual design practices resulted in a coherent whole. The installation defies individual attributions, but there are areas where specific skills or knowledges take the lead. Celina Brownotter, who produced the concept sketch bridging ground and sky, told AN that the group “wanted to create an immersive experience that allows visitors to feel this connection, using materials and structures that evoke the textures, rhythms, and spirit of the land.”
Selena Martinez led brickmaking and plastering workshops with volunteers and staff to build the adobe bench with soil from Phoenix. Smith adapted the Lakota writing system developed by Dakota Wind to produce the stencils, which read, “We Carry the Land” and “Return to Indigenous Ways,” taking their form from plant life native to Oceti Sakowin lands (“W” is a Sand Lily). Freeland Livingston led the detailing for fabrication of installation components. Anjelica Gallegos led the conceptual framework for programs as well as the beadwork for the curtains. Zoë Toledo led the development of the arbor concept alongside Gallegos, with plants harvested from group members’ ancestral homelands, as well as locally, with permission and guidance from Bob Ramirez, Tongva steward of Kuruvungna Springs (a Tongva village, meaning “a place where we are in the sun,” at the site of a freshwater spring located in Santa Monica).
These formal elements are not just rooted in specific material relationships across many homelands, but also represent a coming together of diasporic Indigenous design processes on Tongva lands to propose old and new modes of making place. Toledo began working with M&A in the summer of 2021 as an ArtTable Fellow as part of a process director Kate Yeh Chiu led in reconsidering M&A’s work through a decolonial lens. In early 2023, Toledo and Chiu embarked on the courtyard installation as a continuation of that work, convening and providing funded mentorship pairings for the six emerging Native designers. As diasporic Native people, the group emphasized building relationships with members of local tribes and programming that centers eating, building, and learning together. On September 7, Martinez, Gallegos, and Smith showed video works, projected onto the installation itself, alongside Margeaux Abeyta (Taos Pueblo/Diné), Fritz Bitsoie (Diné/Navajo), Olivia Camfield (Muscogee Nation), Roberto Fatal (Mestize chicana from Raramuri, Genizaro and Spanish ancestry), Mariah Hernandez-Fitch (United Houma Nation), Jay Lamars (Tongva), Suzanne Kite (Oglala Lakota), Maria Maea (Mexican Samoan), AnMarie Mendoza (Tongva), Jazmin Romero (Pipil), and Isaac Ybarra (Tongva, Chumash, Xicano) to conclude the show.
Wilshire Boulevard’s first settler name was “Calle de los Indios,” so-called because it was already a major Tongva route, part of a network connecting Yaanga (in what is currently downtown Los Angeles) to Kuruvungna and to the Pacific Ocean. The route ran along natural asphalt seeps, which Tongva communities (and their neighbors, Chumash, Tataviam, Acjachemen, and other tribes) used as a sealant for ti’at (Tongva seafaring vessels) and watertight basketry, as an adhesive for everyday objects, and for myriad other material applications. The settler narrative of the La Brea Tar Pits as a center for scientific exploration of prehistory has perpetuated erasure of Native peoples from the spatial narrative of Los Angeles.
Across many years and some miles, Indian Alley, downtown in Skid Row, represents another convening of Native artists expressing experiences across Indigenous diasporas on Tongva lands through murals and public art installations. Following the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 (part of U.S. Indian termination policy), Los Angeles became home to one of the largest urban Native American populations in the country, including vast numbers of people purposefully dislocated from community support who created new communities, including in Skid Row, next to the original location of the United American Indian Involvement (UAII) outreach center. While urban Native communities faced massive systemic challenges, this period also saw emergent cultural and political solidarities and resiliencies. Today, following the coordination of artist Stephen Zeigler and art gallery 118 Winston, Indian Alley is home to portraits of Toypurina, Robert Sundance, and others, with contributions from Native and non-Native artists like Jaque Fragua (Jemez Pueblo), Votan Henrique (Maya/Nahua), and Shepherd Fairey.
Sitting atop heavy earth below the fragrance of plants from many lands, one can feel a gentle and directed urgency (a present-day-ness of sorts) in We Carry the Land. The show situated itself within an institutional framework while gesturing beyond it. Even as stenciled glyphs and metal details respond to the same urban environment as that of Indian Alley, practices of relating to earth, plant, and intertribal communities are given generous space and time. In reflecting on the project, Toledo shared a sense of reverence for how the knowledges represented are layered and connected: “We Carry the Land is both a converging point and a small dot of work for all involved in the project.” Bridging earth and sky in the carveout of an urban courtyard, as well as many practices across Native diasporas, the show posed a set of models for how designers and communities will individually and collectively continue to design and build Indigenous futures in what is currently called the United States. Although the installation was temporary, Smith said, “I am confident the connections that were formed in this space will carry on long after the last curtain is taken down.”
Bz Zhang is a Chinese-diasporic architect and artist on Tongva land (what is currently called Los Angeles), where they wonder aloud about representations of violence and the violence of representations by asking questions both using and about disciplinary tools of art and architecture.
