Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023

June 3, 2023 – September 2, 2023

View the exhibition brochure

PUBLIC OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, June 3, 6-8pm (Live music with The Chachalacas)

516 ARTS announces Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023, a juried contemporary art exhibition featuring exceptional talent by emerging and established artists across the state. Now in its fifth year, exhibition is developed through an annual statewide open call to artists to submit their work for consideration. This year’s call was juried by Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), Curator,  Santa Fe; Rachelle B. Pablo (Diné), Curator, 516 ARTS, Albuquerque; and Aaron Wilder, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Roswell Museum.

This year’s selected artists represent wide-ranging backgrounds, mediums, and subject matter, which help us better understand the poetic and creative forces at work here and now in New Mexico. They have multiple distinct but overlapping concerns, including: deep care for the environment that bridges art and activism; being rooted in culture, history, and identity; interest in generative practices that imagine reorganized, restructured futures; examining the subtleties and invisibilities of the world; foregrounding Indigenous culture in our shared consciousness; and exploring histories of spiritual and religious practice in America. Through this work, these artists help us conceive of a brighter path forward.

The artists they selected are: Kirsten Angerbauer, Kaitlin Bryson, Apolo Gomez, Hernan Gomez Chavez, Lynnette Haozous (Chiricahua Apache, Diné, Taos Pueblo), Karma Henry (Paiute, Italian, Portuguese), Ahní Rocheleau, Zuyva Sevilla, Jennifer Thoreson, Kate Turner, Cougar “Ndoi” Vigil (Jicarilla Apache), and Benjamin Winans.

Examples of work in the exhibition include the following. Karma Henry’s work encompasses the ideas of place, perception, and pattern. Reflections of simple forms and shapes (from basketry designs, architectural elements and become overlays for landscape/skyscape imagery. Zuyva Sevilla works across media to create new interpretations of the chaos of the universe, while also engaging with concerns around consumption. Sevilla’s sculptural work dissects the movement of light and heat into active choreographies, often through site-specific installations that activate presentation spaces. 

Jennifer Thoreson examines themes and questions surrounding faith, spirituality, and religious structure by probing into the relationship between belief systems and human behavior: how prescribed moral structures influence our care and perception of self and others. Cougar Vigil is interested in the Indigenous practice of appropriation, adaptive reuse, recycling, salvaging, and systems modifications of pervasive foreign technologies. Benjamin Winans is an interdisciplinary artist who engages old and new media to tell stories and interrogate beliefs. His artworks begin from embodied experience and memory, relying on intensive research to expand the personal into more extensive societal examinations that manifest in drawing, sculpture, installation, printmaking, video, and audio works.

Southwest Contemporary is an art media business that produces curated, critical content about contemporary arts and culture across the Southwest.  southwestcontemporary.com

Press: Albuquerque Journal, Exhibit looks at ’12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now, By Kathaleen Roberts

Daily Lobo, Art educators challenge 'art world', By Addison Key