While you’re in Santa Fe for Indian Market, don’t miss these Native arts experiences at Container, Hecho a Mano, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and beyond.
Santa Fe Indian Market isn’t really one thing, it’s a multiverse. If you’re in town for the largest Indigenous art market in the world, which is produced by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts and has drawn crowds of more than 100,000, it’s best to approach Indian Market like a vast root system with the market at its heart. While wandering the booths surrounding the Santa Fe Plaza, you’re sure to receive invitations from artists to other events. The polite (and invigorating) thing to do is accept.
Here’s your first invite: veteran Santa Fe arts writer Michael Abatemarco presents his top five picks for must-see Indigenous art shows and experiences that coincide with Santa Fe Indian Market. Make sure to comb through the Southwest Contemporary calendar for other highlights, including excellent offerings from the Ralph T. Coe Center, Native Max Magazine, Smoke the Moon, Institute of Contemporary Art Santa Fe, and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.
Virgil Ortiz: Revolt 1680/2180 Daybreak of the Resistance
August 10–October 27, 2024
Container
Summer 2024 marks the 344th anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in which the members of regional pueblos resisted oppressive Spanish colonial rule, ousting the colonialists from power. The revolt ensured greater autonomy for Pueblo communities moving forward. In his immersive exhibition Daybreak of the Resistance, Virgil Ortiz reimagines Po’Pay, the heralded leader of the resistance, and his Pueblo allies, as warriors and protectors of the Indigenous lifeways of an imagined future, 500 years after the events of 1680. His characters—Recon Watchmen, Runners, Gliders, and the Blind Archers Army—engage Castilian forces in an epic battle set in a post-apocalyptic landscape. These Indigenous beings and their future narrative, envisioned in photography, large-scale ceramic sculpture, and through SFX projection mapping, form part of Ortiz’s evolving narrative in which the revolt serves as an ongoing source of inspiration. Collaborating with artists Morgan Barnard, Jonathan Sanchez, William T. Carson, Patrick Lachman, and Alex Sokol, Ortiz takes a bold, uncompromising look at the ideological clash between Native people and those of European descent.
Ian Kualiʻi and Lehuauakea: Wai Ulana (Woven Waters)
August 2–September 2, 2024
Hecho a Mano
Centered on the traditional kapa (paper cloth) and hand-painted patterns of Indigenous Hawaiian culture, the work of Lehuauakea (they/them) explores themes of their Kanaka Maoli identity. Their partner Ian Kualiʻi, a Kanaka Maoli and Mescalero Apache artist, creates dazzling hand-cut paper compositions that merge the urban contemporary experience with his ancestral past. Both artists navigate the terrain between contemporary Western and traditional Kanaka Maoli creativity. They join artists Rhiannon Skye Tafoya (Eastern Band Cherokee, Santa Clara Pueblo) and Haley Greenfeather English (Turtle Mountain Band Chippewa, European descent) for Hecho a Mano’s next Sunday Donut Experience (Sunday, August 18 at 12 pm, with music by Daniel McCoy) where they discuss their work. Skye Tafoya’s current exhibition, Digegv (Where I’m From) explores Native knowledge and teachings on basketry, plant identification, and foraging through letterpress prints and serigraphs. An artist and educator, Greenfeather English (they/them) views their art as an extension of their love of storytelling, exploring personal identity through contemporary and historical narratives and personal and collective themes of humanity. Their current installation occupies the gallery’s front window, also through September 2.
We Sing to Listen
Thursday, August 15, 7 pm
The Mystic
Curated by Kianah LongChase, who goes by the stage name of TwoLips, We Sing to Listen is an evening of Indigenous sound taking place in advance of Santa Fe Indian Market. Raised in Northern New Mexico, LongChase is a Los Angeles, California–based multidisciplinary artist whose media include music, visual art, movement, and acting. LongChase is a multiracial Black and Indigenous woman of Dena’ina and Lakota descent known for her lyricism, voice, and stage presence. LongChase is joined by two-spirit Northern Arapaho artist and activist Big Wind, whose music reflects the contemporary experience of Indigenous communities, blending musical genres that express themes of social justice. Rounding out the night is the surf-country sound of deep-voiced Diné crooner Hataałii (Hataałiinez Wheeler), whose music and lyrics draw comparisons to the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg and country artist Chris Isaak. Tickets are $10.
Where There Is No Name for Art, Ogha Po’oge (White Shell, Water Place)
Saturday, August 17, 12-4 pm
Randall Davey Audubon Center
Co-presented by Ecoartspace and the Randall Davey Audubon Center, and sponsored by the City of Santa Fe Arts and Culture Department, Where There is No Name for Art, Ogha Po’oge (White Shell, Water Place) is a collaborative outdoor exhibition by Submergence Collective, Leah Mata Fragua, Bill Gilbert, Ian Kualiʻi, Ruben Olguin, and Carol Padberg. Taking its title in part from the Tewa name for Santa Fe (Ogha Po’oge), and from the title of author Bruce Hucko’s 1996 children’s book Where There is No Name for Art: The Art of Tewa Pueblo Children, this unique “non-art” art exhibition draws on the experiential relationship between people to the land. In the Tewa language, “there is no name for art,” as Hucko discovered, as creativity is an ongoing part of daily and ceremonial life. The artists’ installations explore the impacts of climate change, sustainability, environmental consciousness, erosion control, microenvironments, deep time, and interspecies connections. The opening events include a natural mineral and botanical pigments workshop display by Ecoartspace members, a 12:30 pm performance by Laura Ortman at the Audubon Center’s David J Henderson Pavilion, and a 1:30 pm cordage and clay bead-making circle titled Earth and Fiber with Padberg.
Driving the Market: Award Winning Native Contemporary Art
August 18, 2024–January 18, 2025
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
The grand opening of the museum’s JoAnn and Bob Balzer Native Market and Contemporary Art Gallery debuts with the inaugural exhibition Driving the Market: Award Winning Native Contemporary Art. The show features award-winning works by artists from the nation’s most prestigious Native art markets, including Santa Fe Indian Market. The exhibition includes pottery, beadwork, avant-garde fashions, digital art, and recorded interviews with artists and others by award-winning filmmaker Kaela Waldstein of Mountain Mover Media, which explore the importance of Native art markets to the Indigenous art scene in the U.S. and their economic impacts on Native communities. More than forty-five artists are featured in the exhibition, including Kathleen Wall (Jemez Pueblo), Tony Abeyta (Diné/Navajo), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), and Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo).
