Alison Saar’s monument, Rise, creates space for the viewer to remember those lost, and those who survived the abuses of the colonization and commodification of women-specifically those of Black, Brown, and Indigenous heritage. Rise embodies Saar’s response to the current attack on reproductive rights and threats made to the sovereignty of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and female bodies, and serves as a catalyst for conversation and dialogues which will bring these issues to light, inspiring compassion and activism.
Saar calls on the goddess Yemaya, a mother spirit; patron spirit of women, especially pregnant women, who commands creation, water, rivers, lakes, streams, and shipwreck survivors in the Yoruba religion. In Saar’s work, Yemaya is surrounded by swarming catfish, doves, cowrie and conch shells, wields a cane knife, and blows on a conch shell, calling women to resist the forces that want to control their freedom and reproductive rights, especially women of color who have historically had their bodies colonized.
Composition by Desiree C. Bailey and Avila Santos
Lens Creator: Amir Alavi
This initiative is made possible by Snapchat. Major support for the initiative is provided by the Mellon Foundation.
Alison Saar, Rise, 2023, in collaboration with LACMA × Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives, © Alison Saar, image courtesy of Alison Saar.
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About the Artist Alison Saar
Alison Saar credits her mother, acclaimed collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar, with exposing her to metaphysical and spiritual traditions. Assisting her father, Richard Saar, a painter and art conservator, in his restoration shop inspired her learning and curiosity about other cultures.
Saar studied studio art and art history at Scripps College in Claremont, California, receiving a BA in art history in 1978. In 1981 she earned her MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. In 1983, Saar became an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, incorporating found objects from the city environment. Saar completed another residency in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1985, which augmented her urban style with Southwest Native American and Mexican influences.
Saar’s style encompasses a multitude of personal, artistic, and cultural references that reflect the plurality of her own experiences. Her sculptures, installations, and prints incorporate found objects including rough-hewn wood, old tin ceiling panels, nails, shards of pottery, glass, and urban detritus. The resulting figures and objects become powerful totems exploring issues of gender, race, heritage, and history. Saar’s art is included in museums and private collections across the U.S.
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About LACMA × Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives
Monumental Perspectives brings together artists and technologists to create augmented reality monuments that explore just some of the histories of Los Angeles communities in an effort to highlight perspectives from across the region. In consultation with community leaders and historians, the third and final cohort of artists, Victoria Fu, Yassi Mazandi, Rashaad Newsome, Rubén Ortiz Torres, and Alison Saar, use the lens of collective ancestral memory to examine the individual and communal legacies we leave today.
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About LACMA
Located on the Pacific Rim, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection of nearly 152,000 objects that illuminate 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe. Committed to showcasing a multitude of art histories, LACMA exhibits and interprets works of art from new and unexpected points of view that are informed by the region’s rich cultural heritage and diverse population. LACMA’s spirit of experimentation is reflected in its work with artists, technologists, and thought leaders as well as in its regional, national, and global partnerships to share collections and programs, create pioneering initiatives, and engage new audiences.
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