Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023

PUBLIC OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, June 3, 6-8pm (Live music with The Chacalacas)

516 ARTS announces Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023, a juried contemporary art exhibition featuring exceptional talent by emerging and established artists across the state. Now in its fifth year, exhibition is developed through an annual statewide open call to artists to submit their work for consideration. This year’s call was juried by Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), Curator, former Executive Director, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe; Rachelle B. Pablo (Diné), Curator, 516 ARTS, Albuquerque; and Aaron Wilder, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Roswell Museum.

The artists they selected are: Kirsten Angerbauer, Kaitlin Bryson, Apolo Gomez, Hernan Gomez Chavez, Lynnette Haozous (Chiricahua Apache, Diné, Taos Pueblo), Karma Henry (Paiute, Italian, Portuguese), Ahní Rocheleau, Zuyva Sevilla, Jennifer Thoreson, Kate Turner, Cougar Vigil (Jicarilla Apache), and Benjamin Winans.

Examples of work in the exhibition include the following. Karma Henry’s work encompasses the ideas of place, perception, and pattern. Reflections of simple forms and shapes (from basketry designs, architectural elements and become overlays for landscape/skyscape imagery. Zuyva Sevilla works across media to create new interpretations of the chaos of the universe, while also engaging with concerns around consumption. Sevilla’s sculptural work dissects the movement of light and heat into active choreographies, often through site-specific installations that activate presentation spaces. 

Jennifer Thoreson examines themes and questions surrounding faith, spirituality, and religious structure by probing into the relationship between belief systems and human behavior: how prescribed moral structures influence our care and perception of self and others. Cougar Henry is interested in the Indigenous practice of appropriation, adaptive reuse, recycling, salvaging, and systems modifications of pervasive foreign technologies. Benjamin Winans is an interdisciplinary artist who engages old and new media to tell stories and interrogate beliefs. His artworks begin from embodied experience and memory, relying on intensive research to expand the personal into more extensive societal examinations that manifest in drawing, sculpture, installation, printmaking, video, and audio works.