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Interior Landscapes

31°19’19.10”N; 109°29’47.62”W: And Golden Light, 2017, video still, courtesy of Bockley Gallery

POSTCOMMODITY     ERIC PAUL-RIEGE 

M. JENEA SANCHEZ     TARA EVONNE TRUDELL

INTERIOR LANDSCAPES          

JANUARY 26 – FEBRUARY 23, 2018

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 26^th 6-9pm

Performances: Opening night 7pm and February 23rd 7pm

Interior Landscapes is an exhibition presented by Sanitary Tortilla Factory and 516 ARTS as part of a collaboration for “The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility”. Interior Landscapes co-curated by Daryl Lucero and sheri crider. The exhibition focus is on the lived experience of people on the U.S.-Mexico border. Elemental to these stories are the absence of political demarcations. Where the border suggests a bifurcation of territoriality, there also exists the space between the north and south.

The artists in this exhibit find themselves living in varying proximities with the border—Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora. Although the artists vary in social, cultural, and geographical distances, the work engages communities situated on the border. The works are collaborative and signify the reciprocal nature in which borders can be negotiated, and recreated to benefit those within them.

The works are examples of socially engaged art that humanize the border wall and its symbol of national identity, culture, and politics. And what we see are the acts that speak to living in a place of tension, violence, and creativity. The border becomes possessed by the humanity of those within it. What we witness are the stories, experiences, and truths not of the artists, but through the medium of conversation between the artists and communities. We witness the creativity of people and place.

In Border Tapestry (2009) M. Jenea Sanchez teases the absence of the border wall by transforming its purpose to divide and uses it to unite. Sanchez utilizes the steel structure as a loom to weave, to recall and connect to the “familial roots of the border communities, the families that are separated by the fence, and the days when movement across was more fluid and natural rather than militarized.”

Tara Evonne Trudell’s work physically transforms the words and messages of those living within the border area. Tara Evonne Trudell hosts poetry workshops with communities situated on the border. In these workshops, participants create poems that are then created into beads which become long strands of poetry. Tara Evonne Trudell see this work as a way to “address the realities of trying to cross the border: a trip plagued with dangerous environments and a heavily militarized zone.”

From the outside looking in, the border can be flat and two-dimensional. These works bring to light the life within. The border is animated, mocked, teased, and made human.

Click here to read the exhibition brochure

Thank you to 516 ARTS for making this exhibition possible.

516 ARTS US-Mexico Boarder Program Guide

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The Alchemical Trace: Transformation and Resilience in Recent Work by LGBTQIA Artists

“Earl”, Earl McBride, 48×36″ 2016, courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery

October 6th-November 3rd, 2017

Opening Reception: October 6th, 6-9pm 

Curated by art historian, Ray Hernández-Durán, The Alchemical Trace: Transformation and Resilience in Recent Work by LGBTQIA Artists is an exhibition meant to open in conjunction with the 15th annual Southwest Gay Lesbian Film Festival, the largest event of its kind in this region of the country. With a focus on resistance, adaptation, and survival, the exhibition will include recent work by a diverse group of emerging LGBTQIA-identified artists from NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., Las Vegas, and Albuquerque, who address themes of healing, growth, memory, and persistence in their art. In addition to the exhibition, there will be a lecture series, art film screenings, and an exhibition catalogue that will be free to the public.