SITE Santa Fe Presents GOING WITH THE FLOW: ART, ACTIONS AND WESTERN WATERS, a new collective exhibition of artists and collectives based in the Southwest of the 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, conferences and performances.
“There Must Be Other Names for the River”, an ongoing collaborative work by Jessica Zeglin, Dylan McLaughlin and Marisa Demarco, aims to build relationships between viewers and the Rio Grande by combining a visual representation of data from flow, sound and performance. It goes beyond gallery walls with a site-specific sound installation in Railyard Park and a live choral performance at SITE Santa Fe July 29.
Basia Irland presents his works Gatherings and deposits series in the galleries and the “Contemplation Stations” in the nearby Railyard Park. SITE Santa Fe has also commissioned Ireland to create “Ice Books”, ephemeral works of art made of ice encrusted with native riparian seeds, which will be released into the river at a public event.
Also in 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 in East Texas. Inside the galleries, ‘GIS Land Animation’ offers 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” defines the Rio Grande as an animated subject deserving of protection, rights and good health. Cinemagraphs shown inside the galleries document the in-person events she hosted along the river where members of the community performed a ritual remedies (remedies) for evil of ojo (evil eye) curse that afflicts him. His new outdoor sculpture “jetty jack” features still images of the remedios superimposed over mock jetty jacks used to straighten the river in the 1950s and 1960s.
Photographer Sharon Stewart follows the fragile and evolving culture of care surrounding the historic waterways of northern New Mexico. After three decades of photographing the myriad complexities of Acequia culture, Stewart captures the destruction wrought by the 2022 Mora Valley wildfires, the lasting damage to local waterways, and community efforts to repair this delicate ecosystem. .
Organized by Brandee Caoba and Lucy R. Lippard, GOING WITH THE FLOW: ART, ACTIONS AND WESTERN WATERS runs April 14 through July 31 at SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico. An audioguide will accompany the exhibition with versions available in English and Spanish.
To learn more, visit www.santafe.org.
