{"id":30687,"date":"2025-08-29T12:12:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/30687\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T12:12:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:12:12","slug":"seeing-new-mexico-through-the-looking-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/30687\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing New Mexico Through the Looking Glass"},"content":{"rendered":"

SANTA FE \u2014 In 1998, science fiction writer Ted Chiang published \u201cStory of Your Life,\u201d in which aliens come to Earth in \u201clooking glasses,\u201d mirrored spaceships that act as communication devices. The central character, linguist Dr. Louise Banks, is tasked with deciphering the aliens\u2019 language. In turn, she begins to see time like they do \u2014 as simultaneous events \u2014 and ultimately glimpses her own future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A reference to \u201cStory of Your Life\u201d is tucked into the exhibition guidebook for Once Within a Time<\/a>, SITE Santa Fe\u2019s 12th International. Curator Cecilia Alemani identified Chiang as one of the exhibition\u2019s 27 \u201cfigures of interest\u201d \u2014 catalysts for the 71 <\/strong>participating artists and more than two dozen writers. What struck me about Alemani\u2019s inclusion of Chiang\u2019s writing was not the reference to extraterrestrial life (many readers will be familiar with the accounts of UFO sightings in New Mexico), but the surreal, endlessly fascinating phenomenon of the looking glass.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once Within a Time takes reflection as a major cue. Within each curated theme, such as \u201cThe Wheel of Telling\u201d and \u201cThe Secret Life of Puppets,\u201d are mirror images, doubles, reversals, and echoes, along with symmetries of place, histories, peoples, and legends \u2014 offering exhibition visitors concurrent rather than sequential events, in which multiple perspectives and timelines unfold. Even the treatment of the exhibition title, in which \u201cTime\u201d is printed upside down<\/a>, gestures to alternative ways of experiencing the temporal, reflective nature of both art and language.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of works by Rebecca Salsbury James (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Among the many echoing narratives are works by Nora Turato and Will Rawls. Turato\u2019s mural \u201cI WANT OUT!\u201d (2025), a red vinyl triptych with one panel per word, is installed on the exterior of SITE Santa Fe, the main venue; inside the museum, Rawls\u2019s Amphigory (2022), a series of inky, glitchy screen prints, seems to respond to Turato\u2019s plea with the barely legible phrase \u201cU Can\u2019t Escape Alive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the gallery with Rawls is a suite of 72 computer drawings from 1969 by hard-edge abstract painter Frederick Hammersley, who died in 2009 at age 90. He hit an artistic dry spell in the late \u201960s, saying, \u201cI painted myself out,\u201d a condition of exhaustion, liberation, or perhaps both. To shake things up, he enrolled in a computer class for artists<\/a> at the University of New Mexico. He used the program ART 1 to create multiple printouts of the individual \u201cdrawings\u201d that comprise the suite on view, visually undulating abstract compositions of gray monochrome letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. With additional presentations of Chester Nez and the \u201cOriginal 29\u201d Navajo Code Talkers<\/a>, Autumn Chacon\u2019s radio frequency installation, and others, visitors may experience some seriously surreal data-driven reverberations. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of David Horvitz, \u201cflock of wingless birds\u201d (2025) (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)<\/p>\n

In SITE\u2019s central gallery space, color-rich reverse paintings on glass \u2014 a vase of flowers, a snake, a dreamlike landscape \u2014 by Rebecca Salsbury James, born in 1891, were just odd enough to make me linger and consider her time in Taos, New Mexico, with Mabel Dodge Luhan, Georgia O\u2019Keeffe, and other New York-to-Taos transplants. A selection from James\u2019s collection of miniatures, including figurines, mirrors, and devotional objects, is also on view, many of which are in pairs or otherwise doubled. One tells a story, but two hold a conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the gallery, I felt like I was in a funhouse or hall of mirrors. Louise Bonnet\u2019s fleshy, misshapen, iridescent-skinned figures had me reflecting on my own pale, bony frame as equally warped and grotesque, alien to New Mexico\u2019s desert environment. Katja Seib\u2019s large-scale portrait paintings present the concept of reflection in literal and metaphysical terms. For example, \u201cCornucopia\u201d (2025) depicts a fortune teller revealing her cards to the viewer; in the background, a framed image of another woman doing the same creates an infinity mirror effect. Nearby, a travel chest that belonged to Do\u00f1a Tules<\/a>, dubbed the \u201cQueen of Sin\u201d for her business activities (gambling and possibly a brothel), sits in the corner lit by a red light bulb, which I read as a heavy-handed reference to the stigma applied to other fiercely independent women who\u2019ve come to the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tKatja Seib, \u201cCornucopia\u201d (2025), oil on canvas (photo Nancy Zastudil\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

Norman Zammitt\u2019s dark paintings of bodily appendages, genitals, and other parts make symmetry seem sensuously sinister; the works on view were censored in Albuquerque when they were shown at the University of New Mexico. Zhang Yunyao also plays with bodily symmetry in his large-scale, abstract graphite drawings on felt. His detailed, dynamic forms bring to mind a corset, cage, or skeleton, in renderings that appear laborious, even painfully pleasurable. Across the gallery, Terran Last Gun\u2019s ink and colored pencil drawings on antique ledger paper repeat symmetrical, hard-edge geometric forms that allude to traditional Piikani visual motifs and modernist abstraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among the show\u2019s themes, \u201cLand of Little Rain\u201d is one of the more obtuse; it does little to reflect or communicate Santa Fe\u2019s complex relationship to and political tensions around water and its increasing scarcity, even with a mural by Minerva Cuevas that references General Electric\u2019s extractive practices. Nor does it make clear the connection between the global warming crisis and the fossil fuel industry in relation to New Mexico \u2014 the state is the nation\u2019s third largest energy producer, primarily of oil and gas. If ever there was an unreal <\/strong>topic to explore, it\u2019s life without water. Considering the poignant, reflective nature of water itself, numerous local artists and writers deeply engaged with the topic, and thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge to consult, I found myself wanting a more radical curatorial approach.<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of Na Mira, \u201cMarquee\u201d (2023) (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)<\/p>\n

Once Within a Time does not shy away, however, from reflecting on the horrors of the atomic bomb and its devastating impact on Japanese communities in New Mexico and beyond. The topic is addressed in several artworks on view at SITE, and others at Finquita, a partner venue seven miles north in the village of Tesuque. David Horowitz\u2019s installation \u201cflock of wingless birds\u201d (2025) consists of 4,555 handmade clear glass marbles scattered on the central gallery\u2019s floor. They represent the men of Japanese descent who were held prisoner in Santa Fe\u2019s internment camps, sites that have since been covered over by the Casa Solana subdivision. Sand in each marble, from a nearby dry arroyo, sparkles like fool\u2019s gold as they refract light. Noted in the exhibition guidebook as the \u201crelentless repetition of one small form,\u201d the installation honors the men\u2019s lives while also illustrating the precarity of navigating past, present, and future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an outbuilding at Finquita, formerly the Shidoni bronze foundry, is Na Mira\u2019s destabilizing installation of \u201cMarquee\u201d (2023), a 16mm film that utilizes the floor, multiple mirrors, a 90-degree corner of the room, and a transistor radio to echo, duplicate, and collapse image, narrative, place, and time. Text and audio in both English and Korean point to cultural assimilation, dislocation, and fractured memory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stories about New Mexico necessitate discussions about Spanish colonialism and religious conversion. While many people of faith believe that God made humans in his image, a mirror of the divine, Maja Ruznic presents another version of creation. Her commissioned paintings are installed in the New Mexico Museum of Art\u2019s auditorium, placed over some existing traditional murals of St. Francis of Assisi, originally conceived by Donald Beauregard, who died before their completion. Ruznic\u2019s verdant paintings of ghostly figures in the landscape act as gossamer veils to other worlds and ways of knowing, channeling people and spirits that relate, in some cases, to her experiences growing up in Bosnia. When Alemani showed these installation images during her curator\u2019s talk, the audience\u2019s gasp of shock that the older murals were covered made clear that Ruznic had hit a nerve \u2014 in all the right ways. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of Maja Ruznic, \u201cKi\u0161a Pada, Trava Raste, GoraZeleni,\u201d \u201cThe Littlest God,\u201d and \u201cAt Eternity\u2019s Gate (for van Gogh)\u201d (all 2025) (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)<\/p>\n

Much of Santa Fe\u2019s history is hidden in plain sight. Daisy Quezada Ure\u00f1a\u2019s commission \u201cPast [between] Present\u201d (2025) at the New Mexico History Museum interrogates the systems and structures at work in culture while magnifying the importance of personal experiences, histories, and relationships. Among other poignant objects in the installation, whether borrowed, gifted, fabricated, or excavated, are bell fragments from the Pueblo Revolt<\/a> and soil from the construction site of the Georgia O\u2019Keeffe Museum\u2019s new wing. Here, Quezada Ure\u00f1a prompts visitors to reflect on the land and stories on which cultural institutions are built. Visible through the museum windows is the Palace of the Governor\u2019s marketplace portal, where Native artists and artisans still sell their works to tourists as they did in the early 1900s. One jewelry maker I spoke with was unaware of\u00a0Once Within a Time, signaling\u00a0<\/strong>a lack of communication from museum staff. I was reminded that for all of its outreach efforts, an exhibition as ambitious as this can still overlook the most obvious opportunities for inclusion and representation.<\/p>\n

In keeping with what history can reveal, Santa Fe-based artist Godfrey Reggio says, \u201cWe are programmed to remember to forget \u2026 the word, the symbol, the sign no longer describes the world we live in.\u201d He characterizes his film Once Within a Time (2022), which inspired the exhibition, as a Bardic tale that chronicles an event set in a future when all humans have left reality. In Chiang\u2019s story, the aliens leave Earth in their looking glasses, with no definitive reason why they arrived or departed. SITE\u2019s 12th International reflects numerous layered narratives linked to Santa Fe, ones that are inspiring and generative in tandem with others that are painful, overwhelming, and incomplete. My hope is that the exhibition\u2019s coming and going, like the stories it presents, will help us decipher what the future is trying to communicate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tDetail of Rebecca Salsbury James\u2019s miniatures collection (photo Nancy Zastudil\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tDo\u00f1a Tules, \u201cPeteca\u201d (travel chest) (c. 19th century), wood, rawhide, wool cloth, and iron (photo Nancy Zastudil\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tInstallation view of 12th SITE SANTA FE International: Once Within a Time. Left wall: Norman Zammitt, Boxed Figures series (1962); right wall: Louise Bonnet, Enclosures series (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)
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\t\tZhang Yunyao, (left) \u201cConnector VII\u201d and (right) \u201cConnector VIII\u201d (both 2025) (photo Nancy Zastudil\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tInstallation view of 12th SITE SANTA FE International: Once Within a Time. Top of left wall\/right wall: Will Rawls, Amphigory (2022); bottom of left wall: Autumn Chacon, \u201cBetween Our Mother\u2019s Voice and Ou rFather\u2019s Ear\u201d (2016\u2013ongoing) (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)
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\t\tInstallation view of Daisy Quezada Ure\u00f1a, \u201cPast [between] Present\u201d (2025) (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)
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\t\tInstallation view of 12th SITE SANTA FE International: Once Within a Time. Left wall: Marilou Schultz, (left to right) \u201cStock Market Digital Image\u201d (2022), \u201cIntegrated Circuit Chip & AI Din\u00e9 Weaving\u201d (2024), and \u201cPopular Chip\u201d (2025); right wall: Computer-generated ink drawings by Frederick Hammersley (1969) (courtesy SITE SANTA FE, photo by Brad Trone, 2025)<\/p>\n

12th SITE SANTA FE International: Once Within a Time<\/a> continues at SITE Santa Fe (1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico) through January 12, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Cecilia Alemani and assistant curator Marina Caron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA FE \u2014 In 1998, science fiction writer Ted Chiang published \u201cStory of Your Life,\u201d in which aliens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,24326,24327],"class_list":{"0":"post-30687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-santa-fe","18":"tag-site-santa-fe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}