Jason S. Ordaz
Senior Citizens
Institute of American Indian Arts 2024 graduating class debuts Origins exhibit
Small though the five-person Spring 2024 graduating senior cohort of museum studies and studio art students at the Institute of American Indian Arts may be, each of the outgoing creatives contributes to something larger and altogether more powerful for the upcoming exhibit Origins at the school’s Balzer Contemporary Edge Gallery.
“My part is Chumash baskets,” says museum studies senior and former Art Vault curator Jaime Herrell (Cherokee Nation and European). “I wanted to reach for a group of people who were outside the Southwest, and Chumash folks’ ancestral homelands would be Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, California…this is about the history of their baskets, understanding the materials—that they’re woven so tightly you could put water in them, cook with them.”
Herrell says only a handful of authentic Chumash baskets exist in museum collections worldwide (including at least one at Santa Fe’s School for Advanced Research), and finding pieces for Origins proved an intense challenge. As luck would have it, however, notable Indigenous arts collector and dealer Kim Martindale caught wind of the show and excitedly loaned Herrell a piece by weaver Petra Pico.
Lifelong Santa Fean, painter and studio arts graduate Jesus Miguel Avena (Mexican-American, Mexica, Mestizo and Chicano), meanwhile, tells SFR he’s excited to showcase the intersection between his painterly practice and a relatively newfound love of ceramics he developed after transferring to IAIA from Santa Fe Community College. In content, Avena says, he leans into magical realism and surrealist, dreamlike narratives; in practice, he creates ceramic frames to house his pieces.
“The drive, or the backbone, of the series was research in Latin American scholarship,” he explains. “I have portraits and figurative paintings, and I’m using the desertscape to animate my own psychological landscapes.”
Printmaker and mental health advocate Sara Chama (Pueblo of Laguna) and multimedia artist Jacob Tyndall (Umonhon Tribe of Nebraska) round out the show, along with museum studies major Isabella Cox (Diné), whose final project examines the relationship between Navajo people and horses—and who says she hopes to enact change in how museums work in the future.
“I noticed there weren’t too many [exhibits] with horses’ relationship to Navajos, even though the Apache and the Navajo were horse cultures,” Cox says. “And I think there’s a different approach needed in museums—[Indigenous people] have different viewpoints, and we’re able to take care of our projects in ways that are culturally significant to us.” (Alex De Vore)
2024 Spring IAIA Graduating Class Exhibit: Origins opening: 5:30-7:30 pm Thursday, April 11. Free. IAIA Balzer Contemporary Edge Gallery, 83 Avan Nu Po Road, (505) 424-2351
Courtesy City Lights
A Life Misunderstood
Throughout the ‘80s and early-’90s, misinformation (or, perhaps, a straight up lack of information) surrounding HIV and AIDS led to further ostracization of an already-outcasted group: the LGBTQ community. One such example was Florida dentist David Acer, who became the subject of tabloid scrutiny and a victim of mob mentality after he accidentally spread HIV to some of his patients. And though Acer died from AIDS in 1990, author Steven Reigns’ new nonfiction book, A Quilt for David, brings his real story to light so many years later. Reigns comes to Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse alongside Equality New Mexico Executive Director Marshall Martinez to discuss the book this week. (Mo Charnot)
Stephen Reigns: A Quilt for David: 6 pm on Thursday, April 11. Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St., (505) 988-4226
Courtesy Center for Contemporary Arts/Tia collection
Fully Essential
If you’ve not taken the time to swing by the Center for Contemporary Art’s Muñoz Waxman Gallery recently, you wouldn’t know the little art center that could (and can and does) recently collaborated with curators from Santa Fe’s Tia Collection for I Say With My Full Essence, a sprawling show featuring eight women artists across a variety of mediums. The show comes down on April 20, but before that happens, you can still catch an open house event this week featuring celebrated Diné painter and muralist Nani Chacon, who herself is part of the exhibit. While you’re there, catch other works by Max Cole, Marianna Uutinen, Grace Rosario Perkins, Dorothy Cross, Karen Hampton, Mandy El-Sayegh and Sarah Rapson, plus the unveiling of a new mural by Heidi K. Brandow (Diné and Kanaka Maoli) that is slated to live on at the CCA. (ADV)
I Say With My Full Essence Open House: Noon-1 pm Saturday, April 13. Free. Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, (505) 982-1338
Courtesy La Reina Bar at El Rey Court
Bey There
Since July 2023, El Rey Court’s La Reina Bar has hosted a once-a-month music-video-themed dance party during the hotel’s long-standing Monday Queer Night tradition. Event organizer Bailey Steele says they started the dance parties to replicate the music-video gay bar culture of larger cities in “little Santa Fe.” This month’s edition will honor legendary singer Beyoncé, following the late March release of her newest country-inspired album Cowboy Carter, with three hours of her catalog ranging back to Destiny’s Child. “So much of starting this event in the first place was just creating a space for queer joy, and pop music is historically such a big avenue,” Steele tells SFR. “There’s just so much tough shit happening around us all the time, and I feel like pop music is a really sweet escape in a lot of ways…and Beyoncé is top of the game.” (Evan Chandler)
Beyoncé Dance Party: 7:30-10:30 pm Monday April 15. Free. La Reina Bar at El Rey Court, 1862 Cerrillos Road, (505) 982-1931
