Curator Ekow Eshun reveals early details of next spring’s There Are Other Worlds, featuring forty-two artists across three “fluid, flowing” passages.
Worldbuilding is a curatorial concept du jour on the international art circuit. Many of today’s biennials play like solar systems that beam visitors from one lore-rich environment to the next. At best, this approach allows for enlightening trips through speculative futures, hidden subcultures, and the occasional sewer. At worst, it can cast a miasma that dumbly replicates the chaos of our era.
Into this galaxy comes the 13th Site Santa Fe International, opening June 11, 2027. Curated by London-based Ekow Eshun, There Are Other Worlds brings together forty-two artists and many still-in-progress commissions. I spoke with Eshun ahead of today’s announcement of the theme and artist list, about an ambitious biennial that’s swiftly constellating.
Today’s press release for There Are Other Worlds states that “the artists explore how art might resist narrowing visions of the future, and instead, offer spaces for alternative ways of seeing and imagining.” They will examine “worlds shaped by looking physically outward and psychologically inward.” Eshun tells me, “I didn’t start off with a sense of an ironclad proposition. I always thought about [it] as a provisional theme. Every single studio visit and conversation I had… was about trying to test out and potentially broaden or adapt that theme.”
He began with a list of “a couple hundred” artists and completed about sixty studio visits, a process that helped birth three sections of the show: Worlds Beyond, Worlds in Common, and Worlds Alive. He acknowledges that the artists, who range from global art stars to local favorites with more recent international breakthroughs, could slot into any of these categories. “But that’s the point, really,” Eshun says, lauding the artists’ tendencies to interpret the world in “fluid, flowing, multi-layered ways.”
The ordinary world is entirely extraordinary in its richness, its complexity, its layeredness.
Southwest history was another source of inspiration for these categories: Worlds Beyond, for example, draws from the legacy of pre-World War II artist collective the Transcendental Painting Group, also a touchpoint of Site’s last biennial. Worlds in Common looks at “alternative possibilities for community and kinship,” some of which are drawn from regional Indigenous frameworks and utopian communities, while Worlds Alive explores post-humanist themes with local-to-global resonance.
Eshun clarifies: “I’m not particularly inviting artists to speak to the specific histories of New Mexico, but at the same time, I’m interested in creating a biennial… that thinks from those histories.” He confirms that, as in Cecilia Alemani’s twelfth International, the show will occupy Site Santa Fe and approximately ten to-be-announced venues across the city, although “they’re primarily institutional spaces” rather than the previous show’s “storefront” interventions.
As for the regional artists in There Are Other Worlds, five names made the list (near-parity with the 2025 rendition’s seven, among seventy artists). All are based in New Mexico: Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota), Michael Namingha (Tewa/Hopi), Nikesha Breeze, Raven Chacon (Diné), and Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo). Also on the list is Tucson-born painter Eamon Ore-Giron, who now lives in Los Angeles. They are joined by familiar names from the biennial multiverse, such as Olafur Eliasson, Arthur Jafa, and Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee).
As for exactly what they’re all contributing, Eshun doesn’t know quite yet, but he brings up his admiration for stories that straddle the magical and mundane—even within a worlds-spanning framework. He says the curatorial process has affirmed that “the ordinary world is entirely extraordinary in its richness, its complexity, its layeredness.”
13th Site Santa Fe International Artist List:
John Akomfrah, Hurvin Anderson, Edgar Arceneaux, Firelei Báez, Sanford Biggers, Frank Bowling, Nikesha Breeze, Raven Chacon, Olafur Eliasson, Ellen Gallagher, Cy Gavin, Jeffrey Gibson, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Louise Giovanelli, Nan Goldin, Rafik Greiss, Shilpa Gupta, Sky Hopinka, Klára Hosnedlová, Marguerite Humeau, Tomashi Jackson, Arthur Jafa, Julianknxx, Hayv Kahraman, Lotus L. Kang, Idris Khan, Bharti Kher, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Danielle Mckinney, Delcy Morelos, Michael Namingha, Eamon Ore-Giron, Mohammed Sami, Zineb Sedira, Rose B. Simpson, Emilija Škarnulytė, Cauleen Smith, Tavares Strachan, Emma Talbot, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Carmen Winant
