Rooted in weaving techniques and bricolage, my basketry works are inspired by where I was born and raised: the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border. Over the past few years, I’ve been constructing sculptures and installations that reimagine the harsh, manufactured borderline into meandering tunnels, archways, and portals, translating my intangible border experience into abstract forms, textures, and transparent layers. The geographic distance between the South Texas coastal plains and the Blue Ridge Mountains deepens my contemplation of place. Here, in the Appalachians, the cool wet air and cushy grass feel a world apart from the scrappy mesquite trees and prickly dry earth of my sweet home. At night I feel unsettled by the green trees and soft mountains obscuring the vastness of the sky.
Basketry is an ancient technology created out of a need to construct dwellings and functional containers. Past makers intuitively constructed what was required to survive using natural materials that were readily available in the landscape they inhabited. Traditional baskets hold data about land, place, and invaluable cultural context in regard to form and design. But baskets can be broader than that. They are sculpture, architecture, and design. Artists using basketry today bring ingenuity to their practice while experimenting with materials, shapes, and meaning, connecting to history through textile structures and processes.
Twined basket structure reminds me of the grid—the border wall. I think about how air can pass through the open cells of a basket, the way I wish people could freely move and migrate from one country to the other. Baskets are a domestic craft referencing the human body, mind, and spirit while also expressing ideas of home, tenderness, and carrying. They are of the past, but their open space holds room for future potential.
In recent works, I wonder: If the US/Mexico border was a line that cannot be crossed, what if you took that line and flexed it into an infinity sign where infinite amounts of migration and movement were permitted? My interest in infinite forms led me to the concept of the Klein bottle. It’s a form that exists in the fourth dimension, with a non-orientable surface. If traveled upon, it could be followed back to the point of origin and, most importantly, it has no boundary. In my sculptures, the agave fibers attached to the form insinuate that it’s meant for sweeping. If the borderline was a line drawn in the sand, I wish to sweep it away. It’s a very mathematical form and for me fits as a poignant symbol for the borderlands and my wish for it to function without boundaries.
Similarly, a Möbius strip is a surface that can be formed by attaching the ends of a strip of flat material with a half-twist. I am not a math-y person but what I love about a Möbius strip is it is a non-orientable surface and if you try to cut it into thirds lengthwise, it produces two linked strips. The links cannot be separated. This is a beautiful and poetic symbol for the borderlands. The borderlands, United States, and Mexico cannot truly be divided.
I chose to translate these mathematical forms into basketry because of their relationship to time, linkage, movement, and lack of boundary. The results are clearly handwoven and appear both ancient and contemporary embracing imperfection, color, and warmth. They are functionless yet hold my translation of tenderness and home, carrying my “of the border” perspective inside.
I think of my sculptures as wishes for the future of the borderlands—poems written for and spoken to the region. Using ancient techniques and rhythms, the woven sculptures are metaphors for aspirational movement shared by one land divided by name, fence, and law.
Image Credits:
Header: Sarita Westrup in her studio, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
(L): Sarita Westrup, Klein’s Bottle Brush, 2023. Reed, mortar, paint, cochineal ink, ixtle. 21 x 21 x 8 1/2 in (53.3 x 53.3 x 21.6 cm). Photo by Kevin Todora, courtesy of the artist
(R): Detail of Westrup’s studio, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
(L): Detail of Westrup’s studio, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
(M): Detail of Westrup’s studio, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
(R): Detail of Westrup’s studio, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist