SITElines.2018: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas: Casa tomada

SITE Santa Fe is pleased to announce the curatorial team, concept, and the first artist for the 2018 edition of SITElines, SITE’s biennial exhibition dedicated to new art from throughout the Americas. Titled Casa tomada, this iteration will be curated by a three-member team:

José Luis Blondet (b. Caracas, Venezuela; lives in Los Angeles) Curator of Special Projects, LACMA, Los Angeles

Candice Hopkins (b. Whitehorse, Yukon; lives in Albuquerque), independent curator, Albuquerque

Ruba Katrib (b. Baltimore; lives in New York), Curator, MoMA PS1, New York

With significant experience across the Americas, the team is supported by Curatorial Advisor Naomi Beckwith, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and by the curatorial team at SITE Santa Fe, Irene Hofmann, SITElines Director; Brandee Caoba, Assistant Curator; and Joanne Lefrak, SITE Center Director.

Casa tomada
To feel the anxiety of authenticity.
To invent others as well as the self.
To deviate and to align.
To be the host or the proprietor.
To be the guest or the trespasser.

The title of SITElines.2018 references Argentine writer Julio Cortázar’s 1946 short story “Casa tomada” (House Taken Over), which follows two shut-in siblings devoted to the care of their ancestral home. As a mysterious and unnamed presence begins to occupy parts of the house, they are eventually forced out onto the street without any material possessions. The exhibition plays off the ambiguities of this story, addressing the reciprocal and complex relationship between the ones who stay and the ones who leave, and those that belong and those that are outliers.  

Questioning notions of private property—of the body, mind, land, and culture—the exhibition asks how boundaries are dissolved and/or violated. Why do we create these divisions? What marks the difference between guest and trespasser? Who is the host and who is the visitor, and when are these roles reversed?

The first artist project of the exhibition is a commissioned song by Stephanie Taylor (USA), a Los Angeles-based artist who explores the relationships between sound and objects, creating musical works amidst installations, which connect various subjects within newly constructed narratives. For SITElines.2018, Taylor has formulated the first press release into a song.  She has enlisted a chorus of five vocalists to highlight underlying vowel sequences and repeating sounds within the text of the press release. The resulting song delivers accurate information about the biennial through an unexpected combination of institutional promotion, language play, and other communication strategies. Following Press Release #1, Taylor will record additional songs that announce aspects of the exhibition, which will be issued leading up to and throughout the run of the exhibition. At the closing event, Taylor’s songs will be performed in a live concert.

Microsite: sitelines2018.com
The SITElines.2018 team has engaged the graphic design studio Venezia-Bronk to design a microsite that hosts information and artwork related to the biennial. Launching in fall 2017, the site is an essential component of the exhibition and will create a continuous connection of feedback between its physical location, time-based programs, and content produced specifically for the Web. The platform will provide early details about the show and ongoing information about programming and events, and will function as a digital repository for commissioned texts.

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 over 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.2016’s edition much wider than a line, was organized around 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. 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
Andy Cushman or Kat Mills, Blue Medium Inc. 
T +1 (212) 675 1800 / acushman [​at​] bluemedium.com / kat [​at​] bluemedium.com