Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Of Maps, Abstraction, and Language

The Indigenous Knowledge Systems lecture series is an ongoing collaboration between SITE SANTA FE and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) MFA in Studio Arts program. They address the latest developments in contemporary Indigenous arts history, theory, criticism, and practices. This year’s series will be held at SITE SANTA FE January 7-9, 2026.

07 JAN 2026
Indigenous Abstraction, Women’s Labor, and Opacity in Modern and Contemporary Native Art
Taylor Rose Payer is an Anishinaabe scholar and PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Minnesota. She spent a decade working in art museums and galleries, earned an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University and received her BA from Dartmouth College. She was born and raised on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

08 JAN 2026
Language of The Land
Steven J. Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, installation, video/film, photography, and community collaboration. Yazzie is a member of the Navajo Nation and a veteran of the Gulf War, serving honorably with the United States Marine Corps from 1988-92. He received a BFA degree in Intermedia at Arizona State University and was named Outstanding Graduate by the Herberger Institute for Design and Art in 2014.

09 JAN 2026
The Grid and the Water: Anishinaabe Mapping in the work of Bonnie Devine and Michael Belmore
Maya Wilson-Sánchez is an Andean curator, art historian, and writer. Born in Ecuador and currently based between Toronto and New York, their work centres on the development, movement, and exchange of art across the Americas. Wilson-Sánchez was the 2020 recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators and a 2021 participant at the Tate Intensive in London.