January 30, 2025
Visual artist Sarah Biscarra Dilley
Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Lassen Land Grab, editorial art commission for "Seeing America's Wilderness for What it Is," The Atlantic 2021
Artist Talk with Sarah Biscarra Dilley
in conversation with Beth Piatote
Thursday, January 30, 2025
4:00 - 5:30pm
Location: Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23
Free & open to the public
Workshop: Using Visual Art for Language Reclamation, with Sarah Biscarra Dilley
Friday, January 31, 2025
10am - 12pm
Location: Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23
Free & open to UC Berkeley students and faculty
Participation limited to 15 - registration required
Register now!
Workshop is full, please email Laurie Macfee to be added to the waiting list.
Presented by the Arts Research Center with support from the Dean's Office of the Division of Arts & Humanities, the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, The Native American Studies Program, Native American Student Development, and the Department of Ethnic Studies. The workshop will be held in collaboration with ARC's Indigenous Poetics Lab.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yaktitʸutitʸu yaktiłhini [Northern Chumash]) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, language worker, and educator serving as the Director of Indigenous Programs and Relationality at Forge Project.
On January 30th at 4pm, Sarah will give an artist talk, followed by a conversation with Beth Piatote, ARC Director.
The following morning, Friday Jan 31 at 10am, Sarah will lead a workshop on using visual art for language reclamation, as part of ARC's Indigenous Poetics Lab offerings. Participants are encouraged to bring a mixed media sketchbook, small canvas, or board as well as preferred writing or drawing implements, photos, printed matter, old books, or other materials they feel comfortable cutting up and/or reworking into mixed media assemblage. Adhesive and brushes will be provided.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley's practice is grounded in collaboration across experiences, communities, and place. Relating land and beings throughout nitspu tiłhin ktitʸu, the State of California, and places joined by shared water, their written and visual texts connect extractive industries, absent treaties, and enclosure to emphasize movement, relational landscapes and embodied sovereignties.
While they listen, learn, and know from their homelands, their family, their kinships, and their language,they began their undergraduate studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe, NM), have a BA in Urban Studies from the San Francisco Art Institute, and hold both an MA and PhD in Native American Studies from University of California, Davis.
Their text-based, curatorial, educational, and visual work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Sites of engagement include: Smithsonian Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, University of California (UCOP, Berkeley, Davis, Santa Barbara), California Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo), SFMoMA, University of Minnesota Press, University of Queensland Art Gallery, California Historical Society, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Artspace (Tāmaki Makaurau), Vancouver Art Gallery, and Creative Time.
