Unfolding Cosmo, 2024
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
26.5 x 49.5 inches
Expanding Orbit, 2024
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
25.5 x 50 inches
Starbirth, 2025
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
29.5 x 51.5 inches
Earthen Spiral, 2024
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
31.5 x 50.5 inches
Spiral Rotation, 2024
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
25.5 x 52.5 inches
Red Shift, 2024
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
30.5 x 49.5 inches
Earth Pine Spiral, 2025
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
30 x 50.5 inches
Unfolding Spiral, 2024
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
35.5 x 51.5 inches
Grounding Loop, 2025
dyed pine needles, cotton yarn
67 x 49 inches
Unending Spiral examines the structural and conceptual implications of the spiral as both a formal strategy and a conceptual framework, drawing parallels between galactic formations and terrestrial craft traditions in textiles, coiled ceramics, and basketry. By employing materials of the earth—hand-dyed pine needles, clay, and fiber—Rosalena grounds her work in tactile, site-responsive processes while simultaneously engaging digital technologies with her hand. The pine needles are naturally dyed in plants such as cochineal, walnut, and onion skin, producing a living palette. These material disruptions interrogate the hierarchies that have historically positioned Indigenous craft in opposition to digital methodologies, proposing instead a continuum in which traditional knowledge and emerging technologies co-generate one another, revealing the spiral as a structure of persistence, recursion, and self-perpetuation.
Using digital images of spirals in nature, such as spiral arms of galaxies taken from the Hubble and Webb telescope—Rosalena translates these celestial structures into handwoven patterns and coiled forms. By positioning the spiral as a recursive, non-linear structure, Unending Spiral challenges dominant narratives of progress, which privilege forward motion and technological advancement over cyclical, regenerative knowledge systems, foregrounding craft as a site of critical resistance and epistemological expansion. Through these hybrid forms, Rosalena posits an alternative material cosmology—one that is iterative, interwoven, and perpetually in infinite motion.
Link to exhibition:
Unending Spiral
BLUM Gallery