Tracing East LA: An interview with Raven Sanchez
Image Description: Artist Raven Sanchez in her LA studio, surrounded by assemblage sculptures and rubbings from her family home.
Raven Sanchez is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles who explores memory and place through painting, sculpture and process based works. Sanchez’s art practice focuses on domestic labor and ancestral memory between the body and material. Her processes and materials include rubbings, charcoal, sand, rocks, iron, plants and dried organic matter as a way to activate and deepen her sensibility around fragmentation, loss, abstraction and vignettes of family.
Her first institutional exhibition titled “Así Sea / So Be It,” curated by Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle, is currently on view at ICA LA. The project features a debut series of over 200 wax rubbings the artist produced of her grandparents’ home in East Los Angeles.
Nina Fandino Schmidt: How would you describe your artistic practice?
Raven Sanchez: I would say that I’m working with a lot of organic materials that I’ve encountered around neighborhoods, around domestic spaces: organic materials that are familiar to me, that are tactile, but are things that my fingertips have memory of. I’m also working with feelings that are sparked by a scent, like a whiff of a house or a whiff of the perfume of your tía or your aunt. And I want to capture that, and meditate on that, and pray with that and be spiritually connected with that.
Image Description: Exterior rubbing of Raven’s grandparents’ home, exhibited at ICA LA.
NFS: What significance does East LA have in your work?
RS: So much. I think there’s always been a yearning for East LA, because my parents raised me in West Whittier, and my grandmother and all my family members lived in East LA, Montebello. And my parents were from there, so it’s like my motherland was always East LA. And we were always driving down Whittier Boulevard or Washington or Beverly to the East Side to do all of our shopping, to [visit] family, and I just love it so much.
… There’s just so much rootedness in the community. There’s a lot of self-sufficiency, and even the domestic space kind of bleeds out into the street. I know that East LA has this really strong reputation of lowrider culture, which my family has been a part of — but I’m really interested in the moments before the car leaves the driveway, and the moments when the car returns, and the food that’s on the stove and on the table when people return home. I’m interested in the in-between moments and the everyday things that really tell the whole story of the place; and so I think it’s really important for my work to reflect that, or to add to that history of this place [whose] culture is so rich.
Image Description: Collage of the artist’s family photographs, exhibited at ICA LA.
NFS: In your experience, what is the relationship between art and archive?
RS: Well, what I’ve learned from [“Así Sea / So Be It”] is that sometimes you’re doing the art, and you don’t know that you’re creating an archive — and I don’t think I knew I was creating an archive until the sheets started to stack up. Sometimes I knew that I was recording this house, [but] there was no expectation for it to be shown. It was for us. It was totally made for my family and for myself, and for anyone that came after and was curious about where we came from or what our story was in LA. So I think it can flip back and forth, and ebb and flow between the two. Which is beautiful, and I like the fact that they overlap sometimes.
Also learning that the archive can be something that we take ownership of, and that it doesn’t have to belong to an institution … I think archive can sometimes feel like there’s these stipulations to make it count as an archive. And I don’t know — I just feel like there’s so much history of archive that’s very DIY. And that’s maybe how archive even started, and eventually became institutionalized.
NFS: Could you give a brief overview of your “Así Sea / So Be It” rubbing project?
RS: So my grandfather stuccoed the [family] home in 1974. His application of the stucco of our home was very gestural. Many years later, like 2022, 2023 … my grandmother hadn’t passed yet, and I didn’t feel like she was going to anytime soon. But I was really fascinated with the exterior of the home, and I understood its gestural application to be like, whoa, “I can see my grandfather’s thought process on this wall.” He’s not here anymore, but I imagine he was manifesting things for our future — and just that stucco process is probably meditative after a while. And then fast forward to 2024, my grandmother is transitioning … and because of the death of a matriarch, oftentimes there’s a decision to sell a home, and it’s not always a unanimous decision. I was just a grandchild and my say in that decision was very low.
Image Description: Raven Sanchez and her family make rubbings from the exterior of her grandparents’ home.
So this project was my way of documenting our time there, and also a way of documenting my grandfather’s gestures through the rubbing and the capturing of the stucco. But also, what I learned was that I was spending time with all of these different parts and all of these different moments of what he’d stuccoed up. It’s almost like I was going back in time for a little bit, and spending time with all of those moments — and what it turned into was meditation.
We were creating collective memory by inviting my mom and my aunts to join me in that process. We were using this space as a space for our grief, because the rubbing process can be fast, but it can also really take time. It also became a space for our healing as well, and our discussions around the future of our family. All of those things really came out of just the archive, and capturing the archive.
Image Description: Rubbing of gate, drain pipe and stucco on the exterior of Raven’s grandparents’ home, exhibited at ICA LA.
NFS: What does it mean for “Así Sea / So Be It” to now be shown in an institution, especially as a work that wasn’t necessarily created for institutions?
It feels like such an honor, like, [I am] so grateful. I have to say all those things. But it also feels like a win, you know? Yeah. A win for a lot of things, a lot of people, a lot of sacrifice and not just my own — like generations of sacrifice. It feels hopeful. Like I have encountered a number of people that this story resonates with, because it connects to their own experiences around home and loss and grief. It has been such an honor to really bring out that feeling, or give space to grieve.
NFS: Your work is interested in lived experiences of domestic labor and ancestral memory. How does the practice of rubbing relate to these concepts?
RS: The grit. I know I’m doing it right, because I’m working really hard. I’ve seen my ancestors, I’ve seen my family members work really hard whether that be that they’re sweating, or that be that they’re grunting, or that they are still on their feet. I feel like that’s been the example shown to me; and that is difficult sometimes to relate to, because I am living in a different time and I have different set of privileges due to their sacrifice, etc. But I know that if that is a part of the work, that is a part of the process, then I’m on the right path. And I can also connect to this stored memory that I have of what to create next, or what I’m making is going to be aligned with who I am and who we are. And that’s so important.
Image Description: The artist’s relative takes rubbings from the exterior of her grandparents’ home.
NFS: What ideas, feelings or actions do you hope people will take up after engaging with your practice?
RS: I’ve heard some feedback that they reflect on their own home, and their own form of archiving, or feel empowered to be the archivist of their own existence and extend that to their loved ones and to their families. But the other side of it would just be as simple as treasuring the time that we have, and not taking it for granted, and realizing that this time is fleeting, you know? And I think we all kind of reflect on that from time to time.
Resources from the Artist
LA County Library – Chicano Resource Center
Chavez Ravine: An Unfinished History
