Sarah Sense Chitimacha, Choctaw, American, b. 1980

Sarah Sense is an artist from Sacramento, California (b.1980). She received a BFA from California State University Chico (2003) and an MFA from Parsons the New School for Design, New York (2005). Sense was the curator and director of the American Indian Community House Gallery, New York City (2005-07) where she catalogued the gallery’s thirty-year history. She completed two murals at the Chitimacha Tribal School (2009) and Yamahana Chitimacha Preschool (2008). Sense has been practicing photo-weaving with traditional basket techniques from her Chitimacha and Choctaw family since 2004. Early works are based on her reintroduction to her Chitimacha community in her late adolescent years, as evident in her earliest weavings which include Chitimacha landscape and Hollywood interpretations of Native North America. After photo-weaving for six years, Sense moved to South America in 2010 to research Indigenous art in the Americas, inspiring a shift in her work to include landscapes and writing. Her storytelling includes those of Native practitioners of twelve countries in the book and exhibition, Weaving the Americas, A Search for Native Art in the Western Hemisphere. The exhibition debuted at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Valdivia, Chile and Galeria de Arte Trece Santiago, Chile (2011). Continuing her search for Indigenous art led Sense to the Caribbean and Southeast Asia (2012-2013), for Weaving Water, debuting in Bristol, England (2013). While living in Ireland she collaborated with her Choctaw grandmother, Chile Blanche Stouff, for Grandmother’s Stories at AHHA in Tulsa, Oklahoma (2015). Following her first child, she focuses on creations about family lines and motherhood for Remember, at the World Cultures Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (2016). As a British Library Eccles Centre Fellow (2019- 22), Sense researched colonial maps of North America, leading to the exhibition, Power Lines, at  Bruce Silverstein, New York, and the site-specific sculpture, Does Water Have Memory, a piece  about Missing and Murdered Indigenous peoples in England Pre-Mayflower, exhibited at the  National Marine Aquarium, Plymouth, England (2019) now permanently installed at Choctaw  Landing in McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Working with maps and landscapes from multiple  archives including the British Library, Tulane University, Missouri Historical Society, Amon  Carter, and Choctaw Cultural Center, she creates large wall weavings that have been  commissioned by several institutions, including Florida State University (2021), Amon Carter  Museum (2022), and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (2023), and been acquired into major  collections including the National Gallery, Washington DC (2025). Her weavings span numerous socio-political themes, including colonial impacts on climate, cultural heritage, and land rights, with the purpose to conceptually reinstate Indigeneity with traditional weaving patterns while decolonizing colonial maps and education, as she rejects erasure. Research for I Want to Hold You Longer (2024-25) expands weaving practices and research into the archive as she holds baskets in museum, community, and family homes. Sense’s research begins in the archives, while her practice begins with family and community. The two experiences merge in the studio, grounding her practice in aesthetic and technical qualities within a history of Choctaw and Chitimacha history revealing generational healing into the present, while working with her three children moves the tradition into their lives, ensuring weaving into their future.