Karma Henry’s landscape reclaims New Mexico terrain for her Indigenous heritage.
Zuyva Sevilla’s work merges techniques of digital prints inside a light box to contemplate the cosmic.
Jennifer Thoreson’s “Portrait of Caspian” honors a young boy with bowers of flowers.
Open at 516 Arts and sponsored by Southwest Contemporary, “12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now” showcases the juried works of both emerging and established artists across the state. Artists flooded jurors with 382 submissions they pared down to 12.
They engaged with the subtleties of the world, from sound to microscopic to the ephemeral, working in everything from acrylic paint on canvas to mixed-media, digital imagery and found objects. These artists have multiple distinct but overlapping concerns.
Henry’s “Toiyabi-kahinu (Towards the mountains)” pairs the sweep of the local landscape with the symbols and designs of her Paiute heritage, foregrounding Native culture into consciousness, said Lauren Tresp, Southwest Contemporary publisher and editor.
“My current body of work encompasses the ideas of place, perception and pattern,” stated Henry (Paiute/Italian/Portuguese). “Reflections of simple forms and shapes (from basketry designs, architectural elements and geometrical forms) have now become overlays for landscape/skyscape imagery.
Pattern is brought to the forefront, literally, of my pieces.”
Sevilla is building an interactive piece with heat sensors to visualize the heat of people in the room through metal panels, Tresp said.
“Through a combination of sculpture, video and digital media, I seek to create new interpretations of the chaos of the universe, while also engaging with concerns around consumption,” Sevilla stated. “My sculptural work dissects the movement of light and heat into active choreographies, often through site-specific installations that activate presentation spaces.”
Thoreson’s portrait is a tribute to a young New Mexico boy suffering from seizures.
In 2021, she created a social media campaign asking people of all faiths and beliefs to contribute one pair of gloves to a collaborative work of art exploring the act of prayer.
“Their task was to sit with a pair of cotton gloves, wear them and mark them with red ink as they form a prayer or an affirmation for one recipient: Caspian, a 5-year-old boy living in New Mexico who suffers from severe seizures,” Thoreson wrote. “Their mark-making process is like a moving meditation.”
Her recent work contemplates acts of communal prayer and ritual, considering how beliefs can forge more empathetic connections.
Benjamin Winans created “Communion” as a commentary on his North Carolina upbringing.
“A lot of his work is engaged in evangelical Christianity,” Tresp said, “and the intersection between Christian nationalism and a toxic strain of that.”
Winans deconstructs and questions the corrosive impact and its ties to warfare and violence through a found church pew, wood, blood, wine, an LCD screen and one-channel video.
