SITElines.2016: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas

SITE Santa Fe announces the selection of over 30 artists and new commissions for the upcoming SITElines.2016 Biennial, much wider than a line, opening on July 16, 2016. This will be the second installment in SITE Santa Fe’s reimagined biennial series with a focus on contemporary art from the Americas. The exhibition is organized around intersecting ideas brought together by a team of five curators—Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Kathleen Ash-Milby, Pip Day, Pablo León de la Barra, and Kiki Mazzucchelli.

Under the leadership of Irene Hofmann, Phillips Director and Chief Curator of SITE Santa Fe, this year’s biennial, much wider than a line, is an articulation of the interconnectedness of the Americas and various shared experiences such as the recognition of colonial legacies, expressions of the vernacular, the influence of indigenous understandings, and our relationship to the land.

much wider than a line takes its title from Leanne Simpson’s, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, a book about life ways of Nishnaabeg people. In her accounts of non-colonial conceptions of nationhood and sovereignty, it is the joint care taking required in the overlapping territorial boundaries between one indigenous nation and another that are traditionally relationship-building. The relationships that emerge are, like the borders themselves, much wider than a line.

The organizing principles of the exhibition take their cue from the remarkable amphitheater structure in Santa Fe designed by the architect Paolo Soleri. The amphitheater was originally built by the Institute of American Indian Arts to support its groundbreaking curricula in contemporary American Indian drama. It represents both a historically potent forum for the exploration of collaborative cross-cultural processes and a stand-in for complexities of geopolitical tensions that presently exist in the region and throughout the Americas.

Participating artists (partial list):
Xenobia Bailey (USA) / Lina Bo Bardi (Italy) / Margarita Cabrera (Mexico) / Raven Chacon (USA) / Benvenuto Chavajay (Guatemala) / Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico) / Lewis deSoto (USA) / Aaron Dysart (USA) / Carla Fernández (Mexico) / Miguel Gandert (USA) / Jeffrey Gibson (USA) / Maria Hupfield (Canada) / Graciela Iturbide (Mexico) / Zacharias Kunuk (Canada) / Marta Minujin (Argentina) / Paulo Nazareth (Brazil) / Javier Téllez (Venezuela) / Juana Valdés (Cuba) / Erika Verzutti (Brazil)

New commissions include:
Jonathas De Andrade (Brazil) / Anna Boghiguian (Egypt) / Sonya Kelliher-Combs (USA) / William Cordova (Peru) / Jorge González (Puerto Rico) / Julia Rometti and Víctor Costales (France and Belarus)

Research and archival contributions:
Margaret Randall (USA) / Conrad Skinner (USA)

SITE center community-based projects:
Pablo Helguera (Mexico) / Francisca Benitez (Chile)

About SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas
SITElines is a radical rethinking of SITE Santa Fe’s signature biennial exhibition. When SITE Santa Fe opened in 1995, it launched what was then the only international biennial of contemporary art in the United States, and one of only a handful of biennials around the world. In the 20 years since, the landscape of the international contemporary art world has expanded, bringing a proliferation of biennials worldwide.

Looking to reinvigorate the biennial model, in 2011, SITE reimagined SITE’s biennial exhibition to focus on the Western Hemisphere, bring new perspectives to the curatorial table, and build a new infrastructure at SITE to support long-term research and new artist commissions. SITElines launched in 2014 with its first exhibition titled Unsettled Landscapes, organized by Janet Dees, Irene Hofmann, Candice Hopkins, and Lucía Sanromán. SITElines is a dynamic part of SITE Santa Fe’s year-round exhibition and public programming.

Media contacts:
Anne Wrinkle, Director of External Affairs, SITE Santa Fe
T +1 (505) 989 1199 x 22 / wrinkle [​at​] sitesantafe.org
Kristin Sancken or Pamela Hernandez, Blue Medium Inc. 
T +1 (212) 675 1800 / kristin [​at​] bluemedium.com / pamela [​at​] bluemedium.com