Sarmiento is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher based in Santa Cruz, California. She works with film, performance, and socio-spatial practices anchored in questions of land-based knowledges and cosmologies, alluvial and liquid forms of resistance and solidarity, and questions of abolition medicine. She holds a PhD in Visual and Performing Arts from the Durban University of Technology, an MA in Peace and Conflict from the Oslo International Peace Research Institute and Stellenbosch University, and is currently completing an MFA in Environmental Art and Social Practice at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.