Essay2024 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
Watch Zozobra Burn for the 100th Time
August 2024 will usher in one hundred years of setting Zozobra ablaze—a ceremony of fire, redemption, and the incineration of Santa Fe’s gloom.
May 24, 2024
Essay
Reaching for the Light: Daniel Hawkins’s Wild West Dream of a Desert Lighthouse
Daniel Hawkins's surreal, fifty-foot Desert Lighthouse is a glowing, perplexing beacon in the desolate Mojave Desert, on the site of ecological catastrophe.
May 21, 2024
EssayNew MexicoSITE Santa Fe Young Curators
What is the Young Curators Program at SITE Santa Fe?
Hanbi Park, one of SITE Santa Fe’s Young Curators, reflects on the program which tasks high schoolers with curating an exhibition from start to finish.
March 27, 2024
EssayNew MexicoSITE Santa Fe Young Curators
Navigating Mental Health Through Creative Channels: How Art Influences Our Mental Health
Young Curator Sofia Garcia reflects on the ways expressive art serves as a powerful channel for emotional release, stress, and anxiety.
March 27, 2024
Bill Gilbert’s Recent Ceramics: Clay as Earth, Form, and Function
Bill Gilbert’s ceramic works at the Anne Cooper Occasional Gallery share with us his relationship with the land and the “appendages” we employ in our experience of the world.
March 14, 2024
EssayUtahVol. 9 Living Histories
A Fluid History Set in Stones, Springs, and Rivers
In this essay, nicholas b jacobsen braids together ongoing histories of Mormon and U.S. settler colonialism and genocide against Nuwu and Diné peoples at Pipe Spring National Monument and Lake Powell.
March 01, 2024
Twin Tracks
Aleina Grace Edwards considers the ways science, religion, and climate change run together in the Dinosaur Capital of Texas.
March 01, 2024
EssayTexasVol. 9 Living Histories
Ancestral threads, a writer’s journey
Anne Elise Urrutia reflects on how exploring and writing about her Mexican family history adds to a broader understanding of a vibrant cultural heritage.
March 01, 2024
If Autumn Knight is Here: Nothing Less
Autumn Knight’s multimedia work at the Visual Arts Center connects video, vinyl drawing, lecture, and performance to challenge audiences to re-think their ideas about disappointment, doing nothing, and sounding.
February 29, 2024
Emptiness is the Mirage of the New Frontier in ann haeyoung’s Exhibition terra nullius
Roswell artist-in-residence ann haeyoung confronts the geopolitics of emptiness in terra nullius at the Roswell Museum.
February 26, 2024
Leslie Martinez Shifts the Personal and Political in The Fault of Formation
Dallas-based Leslie Martinez’s first New York solo show, The Fault of Formation at MoMA PS1, addresses political binaries and cultural survival.
February 14, 2024
Pillar: No More Mud in Our Eyes
Andrés Mario de Varona remembers and honors the life of Aaron Martin Garcia, also known as Pillar, and reveals the powerful human condition of strangers becoming friends, brothers, and teachers.
January 17, 2024
EssayCollectivity + CollaborationSouthwest
Hyperlink’s Creative Rollercoaster Embraces the Whirlwind of Interconnected Artistry
Hyperlink, a nebulous artist collective with projects in Denver, Chicago, and at a uranium mine ghost town in Wyoming, is a proven testament to the power of collectivity and collaboration.
December 13, 2023
The Crestone Ziggurat: An Idiosyncratic Monument Among an Epic Landscape
Crestone Ziggurat, once a private sanctuary for meditation, is a peculiar monument nestled along the edge of the San Luis Valley and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southeast Colorado.
December 06, 2023
Alex Boeschenstein Examines Roswell’s Storied History in New Works
Roswell artist-in-residence Alex Boeschenstein takes inspiration from things seen in the skies in Visionary Rumor at the Roswell Museum.
October 19, 2023
The 99th Burning of Zozobra Indulged Y2K Nostalgia and the Primal Urge to Light a Big Man on Fire
Thousands gathered for Zozobra 2023 in Santa Fe to stuff their sorrows into a fifty-foot puppet and watch the effigy burn to the ground.
October 10, 2023
Semi-Tropical: Stealth Palms
In this essay, Audrey Molloy dissects the stealth palm and the iconographies of the palm tree, telegraph pole, and cell phone tower as visual media that convey myths of Western expansion and technological innovation.
September 01, 2023
A Letter to the Museum
In this essay, Tyler Stallings pens a letter to the University of Arizona Museum of Art regarding Willem de Kooning’s stolen painting Woman-Ochre.
September 01, 2023
Photography for the Apocalypse
Meggan Gould speculates on the future of photographic practice and the potential of the anthotype process, in which plant-based photosensitive emulsions create ephemeral prints.
September 01, 2023
Two Las Cruces Exhibitions Explore the Fallout of Nuclear Weapons Testing
Cara Despain: Specter New Mexico at the NMSU Art Museum and Trinity: Legacies of Nuclear Testing at Branigan Cultural Center examine nuclear fallout impacting local Indigenous and settler communities.
August 17, 2023
Contemporary Aesthetics Renew Debussy’s Mystifying Pelléas et Mélisande at the Santa Fe Opera
In the Santa Fe Opera’s 2023 staging of Pelléas et Mélisande, director Netia Jones’s contemporary aesthetics renew Debussy’s mystifying Symbolist opera for present-day audiences.
July 31, 2023
Three Ways of Walking Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field
The Lightning Field—a vestige of the conceptual, minimalist, and earthwork movements of the mid-20th century by Walter De Maria—provides visitors with multiple, discrete ways of encountering the art object.
July 14, 2023
Celia Álvarez Muñoz Situates Her Practice at the U.S.-Mexico Confluence
Celia Álvarez Muñoz’s first career retrospective at MCASD presents a rich body of work by the celebrated Arlington, Texas-based artist, who is committed to the complexity of stories from the U.S.-Mexico border.
May 31, 2023
A-Z West Might Make You Rethink Absolutely Everything
A-Z West, Andrea Zittel’s decades-long art experiment presently stewarded by High Desert Test Sites near Joshua Tree, investigates the architecture of everyday life by stripping items to their most basic components.
April 28, 2023
EssayVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
A Bird’s Eye View: Water Futures in the Colorado River Basin
Simone Johnson writes about her experience living between New York City and Arizona, while also highlighting her explorations of water and time in the Colorado River Basin.
March 03, 2023
EssayTexasVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Postcard from the Fair Park Lagoon
Artist Trey Burns on the Fair Park Lagoon, an iconic, yet overlooked, land art work by Patricia Johanson in Dallas, Texas.
March 03, 2023
A Brief History of Sonoran Modern, Illuminated by Tucson Modernism Week
Sonoran Modern shaped Southern Arizona architecture nearly eighty years ago. Tucson Modernism Week makes a dedicated effort to highlight the region’s distinctive mid-century modern style.
January 30, 2023
“Pornographic” Mural in Salt Lake City Suburb Causes Confusion, Outrage
Midvale, Utah recently instituted a cultural revitalization project to enhance its downtown. A large mural depicting two nude figures and a ghoulish specter has become the talk of the town. […]
November 17, 2022
Documenta 15: What You Need to Know About the History-Making Quinquennial
Documenta 15, the globally significant quinquennial, was both an exercise in decentralized curation with a focus on the Global South and a show riddled with unrelenting controversies.
October 26, 2022
EssayNew MexicoVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Becoming More Cottonwood
Cottonwoods, giants of riparian habitats, are dying, branch by branch. Erin Elder reflects on the life and death of these trees and how they foreshadow what is to come.
August 26, 2022
