A Plan of Boston
Artist
Sarah Sense
(Chitimacha and Choctaw, born 1980)
Date2023
Mediumwoven archival inkjet prints with tape on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper mounted on white board
Dimensionsimage (irregular): 59.2 × 59.4 cm (23 5/16 × 23 3/8 in.)
framed: 71.8 × 71.4 cm (28 1/4 × 28 1/8 in.)
framed: 71.8 × 71.4 cm (28 1/4 × 28 1/8 in.)
ClassificationsCollages / Assemblages
Credit LineChapin Riley Fund at the Greater Worcester Community Foundation
Object number2023.35
Label TextCommissioned by WAM in 2023, Sense’s woven landscape is an example of counter-mapping, a cartographic attempt to represent landforms from the point of view of a historically oppressed population. Here, she interlaces images of two colonial maps she discovered at the British Library: A Plan of Boston (1776) and A Plan of the Citadel and Town of Plymouth in the County of Devon (1765, seen here), with photographs of her ancestral lands. “[Woven] through the maps are landscape photographs of Avery Island, Chitimacha Ancestral Homeland that is very near to the Chitimacha Reservation and today is owned by Tabasco,” she explains. “In addition to these oak tree photographs from Avery Island, there are [also photographs of] ferns and Redwoods from the California Coast.” The basketweaving designs in A Plan of Boston reflect Sense’s Chitimacha and Choctaw heritage. The central square uses a Chitimacha basket pattern of a blackbird's eye and rabbit's teeth. Around the square, she wove in a Choctaw design of sun and stars.ProvenancePurchased as an artist commission via Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York, by Worcester Art Museum, 2023.On View
Not on view
