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In Santa Fe, An Art Space Reinvents the Biennial
United Kingdom Architecture News - Jul 20, 2014 - 11:10 2046 views
On view at “Unsettled Landscapes,” the latest edition of SITE Santa Fe’s contemporary art biennial, is Patrick Nagatani’s “Bida Hi’ / Opposite Views; Northeast-Navaho Tract Homes and Uranium Tailings, Southwest Shiprock, New Mexico,” 1990 & 1993.
Beginning tonight, the adobe walls of the art space SITE Santa Fe will house a re-creation of an illegal 19th-century New Mexico gambling den, complete with dealers staging rounds of the Spanish card game known as monte. Inspired by the casinos that cropped up during the 1830s New Mexican gold rush, it’s part of a multipronged piece by the artist Pablo Helguera, one of 45 artists in “Unsettled Landscapes,” the latest edition of SITE Santa Fe’s contemporary art biennial, opening this Sunday.
The biennial has built a cult following since its founding in 1995, thanks to its captivating Southwestern backdrop and brainy programming. (Previous curators included Dave Hickey, who soon after received a MacArthur “genius” grant.) After canceling the biennial two years ago, chief curator Irene Hofmann has rebooted it, with the goal of avoiding the cookie-cutter biennial approach that’s been “duplicated by the hundreds,” as Hofmann puts it. (These days, Dhaka, Singapore and even Bushwick, Brooklyn all have biennials.)...Continue Reading