Sarah Aziz

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tumbleweed Rodeo | 2025 Paseo Project Artist in Residence

The Paseo Project welcomes Sarah Aziz as a 2025 Visiting Artist-in-Residence in October. Over four weeks, Aziz will lead the Taos community in the creation of Tumbleweed Rodeo, a participatory, design-build performance that transforms tumbleweeds, dirt, water, and fire into a temporary architectural installation—an adobe wind berm designed to facilitate an outdoor community gathering. Through hands-on construction, storytelling, and multimedia documentation, the project will explore the histories, movements, and ecological entanglements of Northern New Mexico’s landscape.

Project Overview

Tumbleweed Rodeo is an evolving artistic and ecological experiment—a project that turns invasive plant species into architectural material, reimagining both the physical landscape and our relationship to it. Using live GPS tracking, tumbleweeds will be released across the project site, their natural movement dictating the organic layout of the wind berm. Over a series of participatory public events, community members will gather, shape, and transform these ephemeral materials into a lasting form, engaging in oral histories, collaborative labor, and ritualized performance along the way.

The process will culminate in a final community celebration and screening of short documentary films capturing the conversations, movements, and transformations that took place throughout the residency. These films will become part of the project's digital archive (www.tumbleweedrodeo.com) and will be submitted to film festivals, public broadcasting platforms, and regional exhibitions to further share Taos’s unique narratives.

As climate change, drought, and shifting land use patterns continue to transform New Mexico’s high desert landscapes, Tumbleweed Rodeo offers a creative, communal response—rethinking our relationship to invasive species, land stewardship, and the act of building itself. By merging ecological research, performance, and hands-on making, this project not only leaves behind a lasting architectural form but also fosters new conversations, connections, and ways of seeing in Taos.

Far more than an icon of the American West, tumbleweeds serve as a living record of migration, colonization, and environmental change. Their proliferation in the U.S. is directly linked to historical policies of land division, agriculture, and war, from the Public Land Survey System to wheat subsidies in WWI. These fast-moving, border-crossing plants defy human-imposed boundaries, prompting questions about indigeneity, displacement, and adaptation—all central themes to Taos’s layered histories. Through collective action and conversation, Tumbleweed Rodeo invites participants to reflect on how landscapes and cultures shape one another over time.

Project Activities

Aziz’s residency will invite broad community participation through interactive, hands-on engagements that range from scientific tracking to embodied performance and construction. Key activities include:

1. Tracking Tumbleweeds – Attaching live GPS trackers to locally sourced tumbleweeds and releasing them to map the site’s natural wind patterns.

2. Mapping & Designing – Selecting movement paths as the blueprint for the wind berm’s form.

3. Building the Structure – Gathering tumbleweeds, shaping them into mounds, and covering them with tarps to form a temporary structure.

4. Dancing & Digging – Hosting a community dance party to mix adobe from local earth, tumbleweed binder, and water.

5. Constructing the Adobe Wind Berm – Applying layers of cob to solidify the structure, leaving body imprints, textures, and histories embedded in its form.

6. Fire & Transformation – Burning out the tumbleweed formwork, vitrifying the interior surfaces and leaving behind a permanent, sculptural wind berm.

7. Storytelling & Documentation – Recording oral histories, community discussions, and the physical construction process for a series of short films, culminating in a public screening and celebration at the end of the residency.

Public Events & Collaborations

• Community Construction Sessions – Open, participatory events where all are welcome to observe, build, or simply converse.

• Youth Workshop – In partnership with Twirl (or a similar organization), a special session engaging young participants in tumbleweed tracking, adobe building, and creative storytelling.

• Tumbleweed Rodeo (Closing Event) – A final community gathering featuring a film screening, artist talk, and participatory sound/performance element inspired by the residency process.

• Additional Public Programs include artist talks, panel discussions, and interviews to further explore the intersection of art, ecology, and history in Taos.