Kathleen Wall’s new installation merges art and community engagement, prompting deep reflection on place and Indigenous histories. On view at the Santa Fe Rail Trail through August 31, 2024.
Activating Oga Po’ogeh Land Acknowledgment by Kathleen Wall
on view through August 31, 2024
Santa Fe Rail Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Bringing community engagement to installation art, Kathleen Wall’s Activating Oga Po’ogeh Land Acknowledgment creates space for the public to think deeply and critically about the places and spaces in which we reside, asking questions about Indigenous place-based histories and ongoing relations, Western concepts of land ownership, and the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in Santa Fe. The multimedia sculpture, on view through August 31, 2024, along the Santa Fe Rail Trail near Nuckolls Brewing Company, also represents an evolution in Wall’s artistic process.
A Native American visual artist known for her work in ceramics and bronze, Wall (Jemez Pueblo/White Earth Chippewa) is a member of the Pueblo Pottery Collective, the group that co-curated the School for Advanced Research’s landmark traveling exhibition, Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, currently moving from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2020, Wall was recognized as a Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Living Treasure, and in 2021, she received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the now-closed Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the Arts.
While remaining grounded in tradition, Wall’s current projects transcend expectations. Through her work in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Wall has begun incorporating videography and installation projects to address questions of land and identity, both central themes of Activating Oga Po’ogeh.
Constructed with metal frames and concrete ears of corn, the piece is brought to life through video installations of community members walking across Oga Po’ogeh. In this, Wall animates the Railyard, speaking to recent trends towards land acknowledgments and their inadequacy in reconciling the lasting effects of dispossession. Her goal is to construct “conditions for people to encounter land acknowledgment communally. The work takes the land acknowledgment to the land itself—outdoors in a public space.”
Wall’s family and larger community played an important part in bringing Activating Oga Po’ogeh Land Acknowledgment to life, reinforcing Wall’s collaborative approach to art-making, especially in this new, experimental stage. As Wall shared in a 2020 El Palacio article, “My Auntie Dorothy [Trujillo] always used to give me nature clay to work with, but one day she told me that I could use whatever I want—it didn’t have to be nature clay. That was radical; it gave me license to do what I could with what I had.”
This project is supported by the Railyard Park Conservancy’s Railyard Art Project, the City of Santa Fe Arts & Culture Commission, IAIA’s Social Engagement Residency Program, and the Santa Fe Railyard Community Corporation.
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