SITE Santa Fe Announces Participating Artists And New Commissions for SITElines.2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SITE Santa Fe Announces Participating Artists And New Commissions for SITElines.2018
Casa tomada
SITElines.2018: New Perspectives on Art from the Americas
The upcoming exhibition, titled Casa tomada, is the third edition
of SITE’s ongoing biennial series with a focus on Contemporary Art from the Americas
August 3, 2018-January 6, 2019
PREVIEW EVENTS: August 1-4, 2018 PUBLIC OPENING: Friday, August 3, 2018 SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
Santa Fe, NM, May 15, 2018 − SITE Santa Fe is pleased to announce the participating artists and new commissions for the upcoming SITElines.2018 Biennial opening on August 3, 2018. This is the third installment in SITE Santa Fe’s reimagined biennial series with a focus on contemporary art from the Americas.
The exhibition features 23 artists from eight countries and ten new commissions organized by a team of three curators − José Luis Blondet,
Candice Hopkins, and Ruba Katrib, with Naomi Beckwith as Curatorial Advisor.
SITE Santa Fe Presents SITElines.2018: Casa tomada Aug 3, 2018 – Jan 6, 2019
- José Luis Blondet (b. Caracas, Venezuela; lives in Los Angeles) Curator of Special Projects, LACMA, Los Angeles.
- Candice Hopkins (b. Whitehorse, Yukon; lives in Albuquerque), Independent Curator, Albuquerque.
- Ruba Katrib (b. Baltimore; lives in New York), Curator, MoMA PS1, New York.
Curatorial Advisor:
Participating Artists include: (* indicates new commissions)
*1. Lutz Bacher (b. 1943, Berkeley, CA; lives in New York)
Bacher will be creating several new works for the exhibition, including a large- scale work on the side of the building.
2. Ángela Bonadies (b. 1970 Caracas, Venezuela; lives in Madrid and Caracas, Venezuela) and Juan José Olavarría (b. 1969 Valencia, Venezuela; lives in Buenos Aires)
Since 2010, the artists have developed work in different media for their ongoing project La Torre de David [David’s Tower], which focuses on the squatting (between 2007 and 2014) of a bank’s unfinished high-rise tower in Caracas.
*3. Melissa Cody (b.1983 No Water Mesa, AZ; lives in Los Angeles)
Cody will present a group of new and recent weavings. A seventh-generation Diné (Navajo) weaver, Cody produces works that expand on the experimentation inherent to the form. Her works reach beyond the conventions of Germantown designs to include new variations with color, symbols and technique, including weavings that incorporate texts and word play; others reveal influences of the early video game-era, referenced through variegated thread and pixelated symbols.
4. Paz Errázuriz (b. 1944 Santiago, Chile; lives in Santiago, Chile)
5. Victor Estrada (b. 1965, Los Angeles; lives in Los Angeles).
Estrada’s paintings offer a dense and textural interpretation of the landscape he annually traverses driving between Los Angeles and El Paso. Disorienting skies, unsettling atmospheres, recognizable fragments and figures clashing against the “American landscape” set the tone of these thick, almost modeled paintings.
6. Andrea Fraser (b. 1965, Billings, MT; lives in Los Angeles)
Andrea Fraser’s participation focuses on her new book, 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics, which documents the reported political contributions made by trustees of more than 125 US art museums in the 2016 election cycle and its aftermath. Fraser extracts data from her book to design an installation to greet visitors in the lobby of SITE Santa Fe.
*8. Fernanda Laguna (b.1972 Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives in Buenos Aires) Using paper and cardboard, Laguna recreates the walls of a house where several of her actual paintings are hanging.
9. Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (b.1930 – d. 2016; Baker Lake, Nunavut Territory) Mamnguqsualuk created drawings, embroidered textiles, prints, and sculptures over the course of her long career that depict Inuit mythologies and oral tradition. Her works express transformative relationships between people, animals, and the spirit world, influenced by her early migratory life in the Arctic. The exhibition will present some of her most iconic works.
The exhibition features Nomads of the Sea (1996), a photographic history of the last full-blooded Kawésqar people in the Western Patagonia, and a new series produced by Errázuriz in collaboration with Sergio Parra.
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954, Wichita, KS; lives in Oklahoma City)
Edgar Heap of Birds will present an installation of 48 blood red mono prints and their ghosts, titled Surviving Active Shooter Custer (2018). The spirit of these works originates from the ongoing Cheyenne survival of the 1868 Washita Massacre, led by Colonel Custer and U.S. armed forces in Oklahoma and contrasts this with pop music lyrics and recent military invasions.
SITE Santa Fe Presents SITElines.2018: Casa tomada Aug 3, 2018 – Jan 6, 2019
10. Jumana Manna (b.1987 Princeton, NJ; lives in Berlin and Beirut) Manna will present her new film, Wild Relatives
*11. Eduardo Navarro (b.1979 Buenos Aries, Argentina; lives in Buenos Aires) Navarro will create a new site-specific interactive sculpture in the Railyard park adjacent to SITE Santa Fe.
12. NuMu (El Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Guatemala, established in 2012, Guatemala City, by artists Jessica Kairé and Stefan Benchoam) between Norway and the North Pole, and their journey to the Bekaa Valley in (2018), which follows the complexity of a withdrawal of seeds from the Svalbard Seed Bank situated Lebanon, and the occasion’s global implications. This will be the first time the work will be shown in an exhibition in the United States.
A 1:1 replica of NuMu’s idiosyncratic egg-shaped building – formerly an egg sales kiosk – will travel from LACMA in Los Angeles to Santa Fe, where it will be installed in SITE’s front lobby. Throughout the run of Casa tomada, NuMu will house two exhibitions starting with a new version of Radamés “Juni” Figueroa‘s El Nido Salvaje [The Wild Nest], a project developed by the Puerto Rican artist for NuMu in 2013.
*13. Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994 Gallup, NM; lives in Gallup)
*14. Tania Pérez Córdova (b. 1979 Mexico City, Mexico; lives in Mexico City) She will show a group of sculptures that engage in processes of exchange, as well as indicate absences and presences of people and places. She is also creating a new set of paintings that follow this thematic in her work.
15. Jamasee Pitseolak (b.1968 Cape Dorset, Canada; lives in Cape Dorset) Pitseolak is at the forefront of a new generation of Inuit artists. Pitseolak works in customary materials, including stone, antler and ivory; yet his subject matter is distinctly contemporary and infused with humor and sculptural puns.
Ridge’s new installation will consist of regalia, photo collages and eight large looms, which he uses to recreate the ancient dwelling of Na’ashjé’íí Asdzáá (Spiderwoman), the Holy person who taught Diné people to weave. Riege will also premiere a new performance during the preview days that will embody the motions, gestures, and poses of the processes and histories central to Diné weaving.
SITE Santa Fe Presents SITElines.2018: Casa tomada Aug 3, 2018 – Jan 6, 2019
*16. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (b. 1978, Guatemala City; lives in Berlin & Guatemala City)
The point of departure of Ramírez-Figueroa’s commissioned project for the biennial is an early passage from the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of creation, in which domestic objects rebel against the ungratefulness of humans.
17. Curtis Talwst Santiago (b. 1979 Toronto, Canada; lives in Lisbon)
Over the last several years, Santiago has been creating dioramas inside of ring boxes. Inside of these small spaces, Santiago constructs environments that are intimate and performative; the artist has carried them around to show visitors one on one, opening up a scene in the space of his hand. These mobile enclosures are a way of transporting carefully constructed scenes that include specific people, places, and histories. For Casa tomada, Santiago will create a glass house to collect and present a selection of the dioramas together in a singular installation.
*18. Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986 Los Angeles, CA; lives in New York City)
Smith will present a new neon text work, along with a recent video, Men who Swallow Themselves in Mirrors (2017), which includes found and created footage examining constructions of masculinity and violence, featuring intimate video and audio messages sent to the artist from her father who is incarcerated.
*19. Stephanie Taylor (b. 1971 New York; lives in Los Angeles)
Partially taking over SITE’s institutional voice, Taylor is recording a number of songs/press releases for Casa tomada, which are posted to the exhibition’s website, and also distributed via emails and postcards. In the most recent one, Press Release #2, Taylor bombastically announces the participant artists in the biennial. In the galleries, the artist will present Miraculous Fermentations, a new video installation in which she explores the connections among landscape, foreign accents, and legibility.
20. Lawrence Paul Yuxweulptun (b. 1957, Kamloops, Canada; lives in Vancouver, British Columbia)
Yuxweulptun will present painting and a series of new totemic sculptures that address the appropriation of Indigenous aesthetics by modernist artists, while at the same time, speak to ceremony and spirituality, land ownership, and Canada’s treatment of First Nations peoples.
SITE Santa Fe Presents SITElines.2018: Casa tomada Aug 3, 2018 – Jan 6, 2019
Casa tomada / House Taken Over
The title of SITElines.2018 references Argentine writer Julio Cortázar’s 1946 short story “Casa tomada” (House Taken Over), which follows two shut-in siblings devoted to the care of their ancestral home. As a mysterious and unnamed presence begins to occupy parts of the house, they are eventually forced out onto the street without any material possessions. The exhibition plays off the ambiguities of this story, addressing the reciprocal and complex relationship between the ones who stay and the ones who leave, and those that belong and those that are outliers.
About the SITElines Team at SITE Santa Fe
Working with these three guest curators, the team at SITE includes: Irene Hofmann, SITElines Director; Brandee Caoba, Assistant Curator; Joanne Lefrak, SITEcenter Director; Sage Sommer, Exhibitions Manager and Registrar, and John Cross, Lead Preparator.
About the SITElines.2018 Catalogue
SITE Santa Fe will publish a catalogue to accompany the exhibition, with contributions from the three curators, José Luis Blondet, Candice Hopkins, Ruba Katrib, and Naomi Beckwith, Curatorial Advisor, plus newly commissioned texts by Magali Arriola and Evan Calder Williams, and a preface by Irene Hofmann. Designed by David Chickey, the book will be approximately 150 pages, 11 x 8 inches, with full color illustrations, and distributed by Distributed Art Publishers (DAP).
SITElines2018.com Microsite
The SITElines.2018 team has engaged the graphic design studio Venezia- Bronk to design a microsite that hosts information and artwork related to the biennial. Launching in fall 2017, the site is an essential component of the exhibition and will create a continuous connection of feedback between its physical location, time-based programs, and content produced specifically for the Web. The platform will provide early details about the show and ongoing information about programming and events, and will function as a digital repository for commissioned texts.
SITE Santa Fe Presents SITElines.2018: Casa tomada Aug 3, 2018 – Jan 6, 2019
About SITE Santa Fe
SITE Santa Fe opened in 1995 to present what was then the only international biennial of contemporary art in the United States, and one of only a handful of biennials around the world. From the very beginning, SITE established a commitment to a risk-taking and visionary perspective that continues to drive its programs today. Year-round exhibitions and educational programs encourage the creative and intellectual potential of the audience and uphold the region’s tradition of fostering avant-garde art.
As an institution with a year-round contemporary art program, SITE hosts an Art & Culture series of lectures and performances, as well as an extensive education and outreach program for local schools, all of which attract over 20,000 local, national and international visitors annually. Since its launch, SITE has presented over 100 exhibitions — including eleven biennials — of works by over 700 international artists.
Support
SITE acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Additional support comes from Thornburg Investment Management and Avalon Trust.
Media Contacts:
For more information on SITE Santa Fe, images, or to arrange interviews please contact:
Anne Wrinkle, Director of External Affairs, SITE Santa Fe T: +1 (505) 989-1199 x22 | E: wrinkle@sitesantafe.org
Andy Cushman, Blue Medium
T: +1 (212) 675-1800 | E: acushman@bluemedium.com
SITE Santa Fe Presents SITElines.2018: Casa tomada Aug 3, 2018 – Jan 6, 2019