September 20 – Exhibition Tour with Olivia Amaya Ortiz
Saturday, Sep 20, 2025 | 11 am | 516 Arts | Free/Sliding Scale Ticketing | RSVP Required
Step inside Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts with 516 Arts Curator, Olivia Amaya Ortiz, as your guide. This in-depth walkthrough offers insight into the layered themes of sound, language, and identity that shape the exhibition. Explore how the exhibiting artists use multimedia—video, sound installations, performance, and visual art—to respond to the question, How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? This conversational tour provides context, behind-the-scenes perspectives, and space for dialogue, helping visitors connect more deeply with the works and ideas presented.
Olivia is a curator, a museum and arts professional, and a writer. She seeks to reconcile essentialist narratives of identity by advancing relationships to land, decolonial pedagogy, collaborative programming, cultural revitalization, and to the poetics of representation. Currently the Curator at 516 ARTS, Albuquerque, NM, Olivia has also worked to facilitate museum education, community outreach initiatives, artist programs, and public art projects for organizations such as New Mexico Arts, Santa Fe, NM; the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe; the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. She is a contributing writer to the art publication Southwest Contemporary. Olivia holds an MA in Art Education from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and a dual-major BFA from the University of Arizona, Tucson.