Southwest Contemporary: The Hyperlocal explores art that connects immediate environments to global concerns—from borderland communities to regional myths and climate concerns.
Welcome to Volume 11 of Southwest Contemporary: The Hyperlocal.
We begin this issue at the Center of the Universe—Bruce Nauman’s 1988 public sculpture at the University of New Mexico, of course. In the essay by Christina Cook, she considers how her ritual encounters with the piece—documenting slivers of time and space—inform her sense of agency in the face of the vast overwhelm of the climate crisis.
Essentially, this is what we’ve attempted to do throughout this issue: use hyperlocal storytelling as an aperture through which to view issues of global scale. Theorist and activist adrienne maree brown speaks of this in terms of “the fractal—the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet.”
Artists are often on the front lines of community concerns, directly grappling with social justice issues from housing shortages to the humanitarian fallout of the climate crisis. In this issue, we ask: how are artists responding to their immediate environment and community? How are they interpreting the here and now?
Eva Gabriella Flynn and Israel Gómez Mares, the subjects of our studio visits, work with hyperlocal materials to construct visions of the land, or creatures that inhabit it. Both artists live and work around the borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico, cultivating community and connections within this culturally blurred zone.
In our features, Parker Yamasaki looks at the efforts of the Future Town Tour, which stokes conversations through art-infused gatherings in small towns across Colorado. Adele Oliveira rethinks Santa Fe’s art thoroughfare, Canyon Road, through a project that delves into its hyperlocal history and inspires a collective reimagining. Erin Averill writes about an intergenerational group of weavers preserving ancestral practices in Northern New Mexico by harnessing new and old technologies. Jessica Fuentes profiles nonprofit arts organizations that are using innovative tactics to stave off gentrification in San Antonio, Texas. Rica Maestas introduces us to Shayla Blatchford’s (Diné) Anti-Uranium Mapping Project, which uncovers the effects of harmful extractive industries on Indigenous lands through portraits of people and landscapes. And in our field report, Lynn Trimble gives us a hyperlocal tour of Phoenix‘s art scene.
Ours is a dispersed region, with many centers and thriving hubs, connected through far-flung networks. We hope this issue will open your eyes to your own hyperlocal environment.
Thank you for joining us here at Southwest Contemporary. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter and become a member for more critical perspectives on art and culture throughout the Southwest.
—Natalie Hegert, arts editor
About the Cover
The cowboy—an unceasing symbol of the American West—graces the cover of The Hyperlocal. More specifically, a cowgirl. A salty, cut-off-shorts-wearing, larger-than-life cowgirl in a surreal rocky landscape—or is it a stage set?
Colorado-born artist Grace Kennison’s painting exemplifies one of many regional mythologies threaded through this issue, and the impulse to reinvent and reevaluate them.
“We live a hyperlocal life,” says Kennison, who lives in Ridgway, Colorado, an old railroad town in the San Juan Mountains—and the filming location for the John Wayne Western True Grit (1969). “We’re clinging to the ghost of this old cowboy.” Kennison’s work often envisions tense relationships between women and the Western landscape, layering violence, fantasy, humor, and cultural iconography into unsettling tableaux that challenge the long-running romanticization of a complex and dynamic region.
I Remember Being Alone was included in the group exhibition Cowboy at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, reviewed in this issue by Emma S. Ahmad.
—Lauren Tresp, editor + publisher
