A monumental new work by Sandy Rodriguez is now on view at The Huntington in San Marino. Presented as part of the “Borderlands” exhibit, in the reimagined Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Rodriguez’s “Book 13” includes a 20-foot-wide map that connects the histories of borders, displacement, detention, and Indigenous knowledge systems across the United States.
The four-panel map brings these themes into sharp focus through a layered visual language, incorporating imagery such as a Border Patrol vehicle along the U.S.-Mexico border, scenes of detention, militarized police in riot gear, and the whistles used to signal the presence of federal immigration agents.
Through these juxtapositions, Rodriguez places contemporary immigration enforcement in dialogue with the history of Native child removal and federal boarding schools from the 17th through early 20th centuries. In doing so, “Book 13” situates present-day border policies within a longer history of displacement and family separation in the United States.
Using traditional Mesoamerican amate paper and hand-processed Indigenous pigments, Rodriguez examines the fluid nature of borders and the way that those boundaries have been drawn and redrawn throughout history.
That material practice is grounded in research conducted in The Huntington’s collections, where Rodriguez worked with source materials—including a historic U.S. boundary survey—to trace both geopolitical boundaries and the native plants present when the U.S.-Mexico border was first established.
In addition to Rodriguez’s installation, which also includes Indigenous plant portraits, handmade books, and a landscape painting, The Huntington’s “Borderlands” exhibition also spotlights works by Laura Aguilar and Mercedes Dorame. Launched in 2021 and recently expanded, “Borderlands” examines “how artists and objects reflect the impact of shifting and contested boundaries across the United States and the broader Americas.”
“Laura Aguilar: Body and Landscape” spotlights the late photographer’s distinctive use of self-portraiture in Southern California and Western landscapes to explore body politics, identity, and place.
In dialogue with Aguilar and Rodriguez, Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame’s “Deliquescence: Sites of Transformation” brings together archival imagery, ceramics, and sound to reflect on ancestral histories and the layered meanings of land.
Together, these presentations are on view in the reimagined Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, where they are placed in conversation with works by contemporary artists including Betye Saar, Mustafa Ali Clayton, Kara Walker, and Todd Gray.
Saar’s “Drifting Toward Twilight,” for example, assembles found objects within a 17-foot-long wooden canoe, inviting reflection on memory, migration, and the enduring legacies of slavery and systemic racism in the United States.
Seen alongside works from the colonial period through the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, these contemporary installations create a sustained dialogue across time, linking past and present through the lens of American art.
“Borderlands,” on view in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, brings together installations by Sandy Rodriguez and Mercedes Dorame with the exhibition “Laura Aguilar: Body and Landscape.” Exhibition dates vary.
The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, The Huntington ~ 1151 Oxford Rd.San Marino, CA 91108
Open Wednesdays through Mondays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Reservations are required Friday through Sunday, on holidays, and during peak seasons. On display March 22 through September 7, 2026 (though dates vary by exhibit).
This article is sponsored by The Huntington.
