Odyssees: It Starts and Ends with a Tree
DDLA, 2026 

For her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Odyssees features work combining various methods of slow labor. Saubestre’s series began in the rural area of Arraoillos, Portugal. A town with a historical significance of merging cultural practices through its embroidered tapestries. It was here too, that Saubestre fell in love with an olea europaea. An unruly olive tree, with branches shooting out of its thick stalk that contorted and converged in all different directions. Upon returning to her studio in Los Angeles, Saubestre set out to capture its spirit. By combining various process driven methods of hand and machine sewing, embroidery, dyeing with natural pigments, painting and printing, the series sets out to posit Saubestre's own bodily and spiritual relationship to the land by paying homage to cautionary tales, snake detection theory and botany.