Sarai Bustos: Memory Maps

Sarai Bustos makes large-scale paintings of abstracted maps that reorient her first-generation Chicana identity. The artist goes between working on unprimed canvas and manta, a loosely woven fabric that lends transparency to her compositions. The textile is especially popular in Mexico, often used for embroidered, decorative, and ornate garments. When Bustos's father returns to his hometown of Irapuato, Guanajuato, he sources the material for Bustos. These cross-border trips become essential to the artist's early process. Irapuato is known for its strawberry picking, and the fruit appears throughout Bustos's paintings. It's another nod to the artist's hope that her father may locate himself within her memory maps and find a sense of belonging. To that end, Bustos has also inserted language codes into the top corners of her works; they're most commonly used when switching between two languages on a website. The artist uses language to locate herself geographically and spiritually between cultures. In her paintings, double meanings abound. In Hermana 1 (2023), dotted lines and apparent sutures connect pink, black, and orange forms that simultaneously evoke the body and disparate landforms. A disintegrating strawberry appears at the corner. And in Did we dream under the same moon? (2024), strawberries sprout from a gridded purple mass, bordered by a motif that references an embroidered stitch on the Mexican cowboy hats worn by Bustos' father. This boundary symbolizes the traditional barriers the artist feels. In addition to her own family history, Bustos finds inspiration in art historical figures who similarly straddle the divide between California and Mexico. Richard Diebenkorn's abstracted landscapes inform her psychic geographies, while the grand murals of Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros offer her a model for working big. Elizabeth Murray's moving, fractured meditations on domesticity are another reference point. Bustos herself embraces a very physical, meditative process. Lying on a dolly, she rolls across her unprimed substrate as she pours paint. Scale offers her the freedom to move and wonder, to devote attention to disparate areas of canvas in order to arrive at a more cohesive whole. As she creates her new maps, Bustos generates safe new spaces for growth and belonging. Sarai Bustos (b. 1999, Ontario, CA) earned her MFA in painting from Boston University and has been awarded residencies from Rondo, Mexico City and Hewnoaks, Lovell, Maine. The artist has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; Commonwealth Gallery, Boston, MA; Robert Else Gallery, Sacramento, CA; and R.W. & Joyce Witt Gallery, Sacramento, CA, among others.