Blending documentary and fiction, Sasha Wortzel’s films, installations, and performances excavate narratives of political resistance and mutual aid that have been systematically erased from the official record. Approaching her work through rigorous research, often reworking found footage, text, and materials, gaps in the archive become creative departure points for reimagining historical events and dreaming a new way forward. Wortzel’s work has been presented and exhibited nationally and internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, BAMcinématek, DOC NYC, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Outfest, Los Angeles, CA; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Berlinale, Berlin, Germany; S.A.L.T.S, Birsfelden, Switzerland; ICA London, London, England; and Sharjah Film Platform, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Art Matters, Field of Vision, Queer/Art/Mentorship, and a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in film/video. She has participated in residencies including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, Abrons Arts Residency for Visual Artists, Watermill Center, New York; and AIRIE (Artists in Residence in the Everglades), Florida. She is a 2020 studio resident at Oolite Arts, Miami and the spring 2020 artist in residence at the Crisp Ellert Art Museum, St. Augustine, Florida. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum and Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. She has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and New York Magazine.
photo © Shoog Mcdaniel
River of Grass is an essay-style film and installation about the Florida Everglades inspired by Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947). The project examines how Florida’s contemporary landscape of inequity and vulnerability to climate change is historically rooted in the Everglades’ legacies of colonization, drainage and development.