Her work focuses on the ongoing cycles of violence on communities of color by blending historical and recent events in the Los Angeles area and along south-west US-Mexico border.
[1] A transitional moment for Rodriguez happened in 2014 on a visit to Oaxaca, a southern Mexican Region, where she first procured a red pigment called cochineal, coming from the pre-Columbian era.
The encounter with cochineal happened at the same time she was painting fire paintings and the protests began in Ayotzinapa Mexico in response to forty-three missing college students, which included setting fire to palacio nacional and an Enrique Peña Nieto effigy pinata.
[2] A goal of her work is to disrupt dominant narratives and interrogate systems that are ongoing expressions of colonial violence witnessed regularly, including Customs Border Enforcement, Police, and Climate Change.
[3] The artist explains: "The Codex Rodríguez–Mondragón (2017- ) is a collection of maps and specimen paintings about the ongoing cycles of violence on communities of color by blending historical and recent events.
It incorporates hand-processed earth, plant, and insect based watercolor onto the sacred (and once outlawed) amate paper, reclaiming and reaffirming the Indigenous artistic traditions of the Americas.
The use of plant materials is significant not only for situating the work within specific floristic provinces but also for their medicinal and healing properties.
This makes my maps not simply a representation of the place but objects that serve as an active embodiment of their constituent parts.
In my work, a multitude of records, documents, maps and natural materials serve to inform my interpretation of space where various histories are combined, juxtaposed, recovered, and re-envisioned, painted as a codex, a macro and micro view of humanity in relationship with land, time, and power.
One of my personal goals is to disrupt western European dominant narratives and challenge audiences with paintings that interrogate legacies of colonial aggression in our daily lives.
My investigation into Indigenous color use in the Americas led me to research the 16th-century Florentine Codex and the history of image- and color-making in colonial Mexico.
The Florentine Codex is a twelve-volume encyclopedia compiled by Fray Bernadino de Sahagun and several Indigenous writers and artists, known in Nahuatl as tlacuilos.
"[4] In April 2022, Rodriguez participated in a three-week residency at Cornell University as part of the interdisciplinary project "From Invasive Others toward Embracing Each Other: Migration, Dispossession, and Place-Based Knowledge in the Arts of the Americas."
Organized by professors Ella Maria Diaz, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, and Jolene K. Rickard, this project aimed to examine Latinx, Indigenous, and Chicanx histories through visual and performance arts.
[5] During her residency, Rodriguez led workshops, focusing on themes of nature, activism, and traditional bioregional art practices.
[6] Rodriguez demonstrated techniques for creating paints from natural materials, emphasizing sustainable practices and the importance of cultural heritage in artistic expression.
[6] On April 28, 2022, Rodriguez delivered a keynote presentation at Cornell, discussing her artistic practice and the research underpinning her work with indigenous pigments.
[5] In this presentation, available on YouTube, she elaborated on her residency experience, highlighting her collaborations with students and the reciprocal learning that took place.
[6] 2023 Sandy Rodriguez - Unfolding Histories: 200 Years of Resistance [solo exhibition], AD&A Museum, UC-Santa Barbara, CA Visualizing Place — Maps from The Bancroft Library, The Bancroft Library Gallery, University of California-Berkeley, CA Day Jobs, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas-Austin, TX To Translate the Unfathomable [solo exhibition], Rutgers Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, NJ Borderlands, pt.
2, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA 2022 Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche and the Conquest of Mexico, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX Contemporary Ex-Voto: Devotion Beyond Medium, New Mexico State University, Art Museum, NM Past/Present/Future: Expanding Indigenous American, Latinx, Hispanic American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander Perspectives in Thomas J. Watson Library, The Met Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Busan Biennale: We, on the Rising Wave, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Republic of Korea Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche and the Conquest of Mexico, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche and the Conquest of Mexico, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO 2021 Sandy Rodriguez - In Isolation [solo exhibition], Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX Mixpantli: Contemporary Echoes, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Borderlands, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA Estamos Bien - La Trienal 20/21, El Museo, New York, NY Re:Visión Art in the Americas, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency 15th Anniversary Exhibition, San Bernardino County Museum, CA 2019 Mexicali Biennial: Calafia — Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA 2018 Sandy Rodriguez: Codex Rodríguez-Mondragón [solo exhibition], Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA You Will Not Be Forgotten is an exhibition by rodriguez, held at the Charlie James Gallery from January 25 to March 7, 2020.
[7] This exhibition marks Rodriguez's first solo presentation at the gallery and features an installation of works from her ongoing Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón project.
[7] Dedicated to the memory of seven Central American child migrants who died in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody during 2018 and 2019, the exhibition comprises twenty pieces, including portraits of the children and a large-scale map detailing the incidents across the U.S.-Mexico border.
[7][8] The installation also includes a visual recipe for healing "susto" or trauma, as derived from the colonial medicinal manuscript Codex de la Cruz-Badiano.
[7][8] “Rodriguez/Valadez in Vernon” is a two-painter exhibition at Fine Art Solutions featuring Los Angeles artists Sandy Rodriguez and John Valadez.
[9] This show highlights their unique perspectives on the city, often infused with dark humor and elements of the magical.
2023, Jacob Lawrence Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY 2023, Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Hermitage Art Retreat, Florida [12] 2022, Mapping the Early Modern World, an NEH summer institute, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL [withdrew] 2021, Migrations initiative, Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative and Global Cornell [13] 2021, Creative Capital Award 2021-2024 [14] 2020, Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Residency, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, Los Angeles, CA [15] 2020, Alma Ruiz Artist Fellowship, Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, Joshua Tree, CA [16] 2019, City of Los Angeles (COLA) Master Artist Fellow, Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, CA [17] 2018, National Recognition to the Best in Public Art Projects Annually, Public Art Network Year in Review, American for the Arts, New York, NY [18] 2017, Trailblazer Award, Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, CA 2017, Artist-in-Residence, Los Angeles County Arts Commission’s Civic Art [19] 2016, Program, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, Recuperative Care Center (RCC), Los Angeles, CA 2014-2015, Artist-in-Residence, Art+Practice, Los Angeles, CA[20] Rodriguez, Sandy, and Laura Ortman.
; texts by Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Ella Maria Diaz, Charlene Villaseñor Black, and Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.
“Things to know about 'The Legacy of Malinche," the San Antonio Museum of Art's big fall exhibit”.
[29] "Sandy Rodriguez Unveils new pandemic-inspired works on paper in exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art”.
"How artist Sandy Rodriguez tells today's fraught immigration story with pre-Columbian painting tools".