SITElines.2014:
Unsettled Landscapes
July 20, 2014–January 15, 2015

Opening events: July 17–19, 2014 in Santa Fe, New Mexico

SITE Santa Fe
1606 Paseo de Peralta
Santa Fe, NM 87501

SITElines signifies a radical rethinking of SITE Santa Fe’s signature biennial exhibition, originally established in 1995. It represents a collaborative structure for planning biennials, a vision for continuity between biennials, a commitment to community and place, and a dedication to new and under-recognized art. Unsettled Landscapes looks at the urgencies, political conditions, and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas. Through three themes—landscape, territory, and trade—this exhibition expresses the interconnections between representations of the land, movement across the land, and economies and resources derived from the land.

Opening weekend programming
Thursday, July 17
5–7pm
“First Look” cocktail party and exhibition preview

7:30pm
Gala dinner at the Santa Fe Farmers Market Pavilion

Friday, July 18
1pm and 2:30pm
Performances by Unsettled Landscapes artist Pablo Helguera at San Miguel Chapel

4–5pm
Curators’ introduction at the Santa Fe Farmers Market Pavilion

5–8pm
Members preview party (SITE Members only)

Saturday, July 19
11am–12:30pm
Davidoff Art Dialogue: “Confronting Paradise: Land and Landscape in the Caribbean”
Moderated by András Szántó, Davidoff Art Initiative
in conversation with Blue Curry (Bahamas); Christopher Cozier (Trinidad); Deborah Jack (St. Maarten); Sara Hermann (Dominican Republic) and Glenda Léon (Cuba)

2–5pm
Public opening of Unsettled Landscapes

New Works and Commissions
Unsettled Landscapes will include 45 artists and artists’ collaboratives from 16 countries. Of these works included in the exhibition, there will be 13 new commissions, large-scale installations, significant new works, and off-site projects. A selection of these new works include:

Jamison Chas Banks (b. Arkansas City, Kansas; lives in Santa Fe) has created a new installation that investigates the relationship between the Louisiana Purchase, Napoleon’s exile, the exile of the Cherokee in Oklahoma, and his own Cherokee/Cayuga-Seneca family history.

Andrea Bowers (b. Wilmington, Ohio; lives in Los Angeles) will present a new large-scale sculpture that memorializes a grove of oaks and sycamores that the artist, and four other activists, attempted to save from bulldozing in 2011.

Johanna Calle (b. Bogotá; lives in Bogotá) has created a large-scale drawing for Unsettled Landscapes that represents the Ceiba trees native to Mesoamerica. The tree’s massive silhouette is drawn on blank notary sheets using typewritten texts from a variety of sources that refer to Colombia’s 2011 agrarian reform, the Ley de Vívtimas o Ley de Restitución (Law of Victims or Law of Land Restitution), which outlines the rights of victims of displacement.

Blue Curry’s (b. Nassau, Bahamas; lives in Nassau and London) new work features a live webcam feed of the harbor of Nassau that is focused on the tourist cruise ships that come into the harbor and transform the Bahamian landscape daily. In addition to this live feed that will be projected in the exhibition, a flagpole in front of SITE’s building will feature a changing combination of custom-made flags that will announce the arrival of each new ship.

Gianfranco Foschino (b. Santiago, Chile; lives in Santiago) will present a new video installation that features footage shot from a small motorboat travelling through the Guaitecas and Chonos archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern Chile. With no beginning and no end, No Man’s Land takes viewers on an uninterrupted loop through this remote landscape.

Futurefarmers (founded and based in San Francisco) is developing a new project that engages New Mexico’s complex nuclear history and the “father of the atomic bomb,” Robert Oppenheimer. Their project is inspired by a series of curious memoranda sent from Dr. Oppenheimer’s office in 1943, requesting a nail be driven into the physicist’s wall. At the center of their new work for Unsettled Landscapes, Futurefarmers has processed and formed the simple nail using materials sourced from New Mexico.

Pablo Helguera (b. Mexico City; lives in New York) has developed a new work in the form of multiple performances, and an installation that investigates vignettes from the period between 1821 and 1848, when the majority of the present-day state of New Mexico was a province of Mexico.

Miler Lagos (b. Bogotá; lives in Bogotá) pays homage to the majestic tree believed by the ancient Tikuna people of the Brazilian rain forest to have formed the Amazon River when it was felled. Lagos’ The Great Tree is created using three tons of recycled newsprint that has been stacked, bound, and carved into the shape of a 14-foot tree.

Glenda León (b. Havana, Cuba; lives in Havana and Madrid, Spain) will install a large-scale work within the trees on SITE’s property and throughout the nearby Railyard Park. Esperanza (Out of Season) is a work that introduces artificial leaves to the branches of live deciduous trees.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (b. Madrid, Spain; lives in Chicago) is creating a new work that explores the politics, legalities, and cultural complexities of water rights in the American Southwest. Well 35° 58′ 16″N 106° 5′ 21″ W is a functional well installed on land belonging to the Santa Clara Pueblo. With the ownership of Well transferred from the artist to the Pueblo upon completion of the well installation.

Jason Middlebrook (b. Jackson, Michigan; lives in Hudson, New York) has altered an old shipping container to create a replica of a 19th-century general store, reminiscent of another era, when early towns in the west like Santa Fe, relied on the general store to carry supplies of all kinds. Middlebrook’s general store will feature hand made or salvaged objects available only through barter.

Kent Monkman (b. St. Mary’s, Ontario, Canada; lives in Toronto) has created a large-scale diorama that critically engages with the history of landscape painting, representations of Native Americans, and gender identity.

Marcos Ramírez ERRE (b. Tijuana, Mexico; lives in Tijuana) and David Taylor (b. Beaufort, South Carolina; lives in Tucson) are developing a long-term project that marks their first formal artistic collaboration. Their new project, launching during the opening of Unsettled Landscapes, is conceived as a survey of the 1821 border between Mexico and the western territories of the United States.

Participating artists
(Alphabetized by last name)

Shuvinai Ashoona (Canada) / Jamison Chas Banks (USA) / Raymond Boisjoly (Canada) / Andrea Bowers (USA) / Matthew Buckingham (USA) / Adriana Bustos (Argentina) / Johanna Calle (Colombia) / Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay/USA) / Liz Cohen (USA) / Minerva Cuevas (Mexico) / Blue Curry (Bahamas/Great Britain) / Agnes Denes (USA) / Juan Downey (Chile) / Marcos Ramírez ERRE & David Taylor (Mexico/USA) / Gianfranco Foschino (Chile) / Futurefarmers (USA) / Anna Bella Geiger (Brazil) / Andrea Geyer (Germany/USA) / Frank Gohlke (USA) / Pablo Helguera (Mexico/USA) / James Hyde (USA) / Deborah Jack (Netherlands/Saint Martin/USA) / Yishai Jusidman (Mexico/USA) / Leandro Katz (Argentina/USA) / Irene Kopelman (Argentina) / Miler Lagos (Colombia) / Glenda León (Cuba) / Ric Lum (USA) / Antonio Vega Macotela (Mexico) / Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Spain/USA) / Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves (Peru) / Daniel Joseph Martinez (USA) / Jason Middlebrook (USA) / Ohotaq Mikkigak (Canada) / Kent Monkman (Canada) / Patrick Nagatani (USA) / Florence Miller Pierce (USA) / Marcel Pinas (Suriname) / Edward Poitras (Canada) / Fernando Palma Rodríguez (Mexico) / Kevin Schmidt (Canada) / Allan Sekula (USA) / Melanie Smith (Great Britain/Mexico) / Charles Stankievech (Canada) / Clarissa Tossin (Brazil)

Curatorial team
Candice Hopkins, curator (b. Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada; lives in Albuquerque)
Lucía Sanromán, curator (b. Guadalajara, México; lives in Mexico City)
Janet Dees, curator of special projects (b. New York; lives in Santa Fe)
Irene Hofmann, sitelines director (b. New York; lives in Santa Fe)

Curatorial advisors
Christopher Cozier (b. Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; lives in Port of Spain)
Inti Guerrero (b. Bogotá, Colombia; lives in Costa Rica)
Julieta Gonzalez (b. Caracas, Venezuela; lives in México City)
Eva Grinstein (b. Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives in Buenos Aires)
Kitty Scott (b. St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada; lives in Toronto)

The exhibition is made possible in part through generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts Artworks Grant, the SITE Board of Directors and many other generous foundations and friends. This announcement is made possible in part by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers Tax.

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 x 22

Rachel Patall-David, Blue Medium
T +1 212 675 1800