Before viewing Nicholas Galanin’s Interference Patterns, a sprawling SITE Santa Fe exhibition delving in part into the legacies and consequences of colonization, visitors might hear uncontrolled screaming and wonder if they’re about to see more explicit horrors than they’d imagined.

The first room featuring the Indigenous multidisciplinary artist’s work houses Neon American Anthem, an 11½-by-16-foot stark neon sign reading, “I’ve Composed a New National Anthem: Take a Knee and Scream Until You Can’t Breathe.” Fifteen mats are arranged in front of the buzzing red letters in what curator Brandee Caoba calls an invitation for catharsis.

“‘Take a knee’ was made popular through [former San Francisco 49ers quarterback] Colin Kaepernick in the NFL,” she says. “It’s at once a gesture of reverence but also defiance, and ‘scream until you can’t breathe’ is a reference to police brutality and the murders of George Floyd and Tyre Nichols and so many other people of color by police. There’s so much reverberating settler colonial violence and generational trauma in New Mexico. … There’s a lot to be screaming about right now.”