Anna Rotty’s work deals with beauty and anxiety, using water as a jumping-off point to explore the politics of modern civilization.
Anna Rotty is an artist of the sea, now working from the ancient ocean floor that we call Albuquerque, New Mexico. Spun through her body of work is that memory of water—her own and a more pervasive one written into the landscape.
Hailing from Massachusetts, Rotty came to Albuquerque to pursue an MFA at the University of New Mexico, where her degree is currently underway. Her recent works examine the “pleasures and anxieties linked to water,” which often open up dialogues around the ecological impacts of late-stage capitalism. Take, for example, Paradise Waterfall, a ten-foot-tall deconstructed photo collage that references Rotty’s memories of swimming near the failed large-scale energy utility that caused one of the largest wildfires in U.S. history.
Nothing Without Each Other brings dried earth—a chunk of mud pulled from the Rio Grande—onto a pedestal for our consideration, dusting it with a photographic overlay and reflective acrylic such that the movement and shine of water are cast on it. Coaxed forth from the object itself is the memory of water it was once closer to, yet it remains transmuted. Flashing, iridescent, it is both something wholly common and very unexpected. What this piece so elegantly brings to bear are questions of both the history and the future of New Mexico in relation to its water.
These pieces are part of a bigger cycle of work—spectrals from a shoreless sea—which was the focus of a solo show in the fall of 2022 at Strata Gallery, where Rotty is a member artist.
Evocative of sun and water, viewers can equally bask in the warmth of Rotty’s work or engage with the anxieties they interrogate. Either is a rewarding experience.
Albuquerque, New Mexico | annarotty.com | @annarotty
