Contemporary

Instruction Manual

– SITElines 2016 – SITE Santa Fe –

Santa Fe, NM – This complex show includes more than 30 artists and several conceptual ideas that require some background to fully appreciate and understand. So I’ve made this extra guide with some of the curatorial notes for the biennial titled Much Wider than a Line.

Marta Minujin – Nest – based on the nests build by native South American birds, Minujin has built a space designed for safety – go inside and be protected, she said, which is great goal for architecture. Inside is a video she made in the 1970s when she traveled carrying seeds from place to place and made performance art delivering the gifts.

Mariana Catillo Deball’s sculpture – clay totems. Outside the entrace of Site Santa Fe are 3 of the 7 totem poles made for a 2015 exhibition in Oaxaca – titled Who would measure the space, who will tell me the time?  According to curator, Pablo León de la Barra, Deball asks the question: why are indigenous people seeing their artifacts presented as historic, even though the peoples are still living. She asked craftspeople in Oaxaca to make these elements to build the totems, and to think about how to show the history of the universe in one day, and  their day now and in 100 years.

Conrad Skinner’s research on the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater.

Abel Rodriguez, a native American from Columbia, a septuagenarian illustrator of flora and fauna.

Juana Valdez, cleaning rags made of bone china porcelain clay.

Javier Téllez’s film To Have Done with the Judgement of God, read the article in Pasatiempo, the arts section of the Santa Fe New Mexican.