SITE Santa Fe presents GOING WITH THE FLOW: ART, ACTIONS, AND WESTERN WATERS, a new group exhibition of artists and collectives based in the Southwestern United States. Exploring the role of water in the arid Southwest during the current extreme droughts, participating artists engage the institution’s indoor gallery spaces and locations across Santa Fe with temporary artworks, interventions, community collaboration, talks, and performances.
“There Must Be Other Names For The River,” an ongoing collaborative artwork by Jessica Zeglin, Dylan McLaughlin, and Marisa Demarco, aims to build relationships between viewers and the Rio Grande by combining a visual representation of streamflow data, sound, and performance. It reaches beyond the gallery walls with a site-specific sound installation in the Railyard Park and a live choral performance at SITE Santa Fe on July 29.
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Basia Irland presents works from her Gatherings and Repositories series within the galleries and “Contemplation Stations” in the neighboring Railyard Park. SITE Santa Fe also commissioned Irland to create “Ice Books,” ephemeral artworks made from ice embedded with native riparian seeds, which will be released into the river as a public event.
Also in the Railyard Park, “Fountain (Orphan)” by artist collective M12 Studio uses the figure of a water pump as an entry point into the complex relationship between surface water and groundwater in New Mexico and East Texas. Inside the galleries, “GIS Land Animation” provides a layered look at land and water use over time, presented alongside historical artifacts and archival photos.
Paula Castillo’s participatory project “Reverse the Curse” frames the Rio Grande as an animate subject deserving of protection, rights, and good health. Cinemagraphs playing inside the galleries document the in-person events she organized along the river during which community members performed ritual remedios (remedies) for the mal de ojo (evil eye) curse afflicting it. Her new outdoor sculpture “jetty jack” features stills from the remedios overlaid onto simulacrums of jetty jacks used to straighten the river in the 1950s and ’60s.
Photographer Sharon Stewart follows the fragile and evolving culture of care surrounding historic waterways in Northern New Mexico. After three decades of photographing the myriad complexities of acequia culture, Stewart captures the destruction wrought by the 2022 wildfires in Mora Valley, the lasting damage to local waterways, and community efforts to repair this delicate ecosystem.
Curated by Brandee Caoba and Lucy R. Lippard, GOING WITH THE FLOW: ART, ACTIONS, AND WESTERN WATERS is on view from April 14 through July 31 at SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico. An audio guide will accompany the exhibition with versions available in English and Spanish.
To learn more, visit sitesantafe.org.
Source: Hyperallergic.com