Martabel Wasserman
Martabel Wasserman is a PhD candidate in Art and Art History with a minor in the Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of California with a certificate in the Graduate Feminist Emphasis. Engaging primarily with place-based research, her research thinks with and through specific ecosystems in order to imagine materially rooted alternative futures. Her current project "Capturing the Rock: Alcatraz and the (Un)Making of the Carceral Landscape" explores the historical conjuncture between notions of landscape and imprisonment in the United States through the site of Alcatraz. By analyzing photographs from over one hundred years of Alcatraz’s history—from the 1848-1855 Gold Rush to the 1969-1971 Indians of All Tribes Occupation—the project traces the relationship between resource extraction and the carceral landscape in California. Using the theoretical framework of abolition ecology, it highlights the intersections of environmental justice and the abolition of the prison industrial complex, both in the past and present.
In addition to her academic work, she is an artist and curator. Upcoming projects include co-curating "Never Again is Now: Japanese American Women and the Legacy of Mass Incarceration" with Dr. Alice Yang and an exhibition of her photography entitled "Fruiting Bodies" at the Musuem of Art and History, Santa Cruz.
In the upcoming year, Wasserman will explore how photography’s development as a tool for the aestheticization of the carceral landscape, colonial ethnography, surveillance and the invention of criminality all intersect with the history of Alcatraz. Photography and photo-based media have similarly allowed for visualizing the land differently, subverting the technology that mediated the formation of the carceral landscape in California. As a Dee Fellow, Wasserman will focus her research on how artists and activists have pictured a decolonized Alcatraz, beginning with the 1969 occupation. In addition to archival materials, she will be exploring how the site's history functions in the work of contemporary artists.