Looking for a Place
In 1999, Rosa Martínez extended the earlier biennials’ meditations on place by bringing 29 artists from 23 countries together in Looking for a Place. Understanding her role as editor/agitator, Martínez wanted a “fluid alternative to the inviolable solidity of museums,” where white cubes display beautiful objects. Her artists both punctured SITE’s walls and reached beyond them into public, commercial, and sacred spaces like the old dancehall at Galisteo, the Los Alamos airport, and a municipal parking garage. Nobody objected to Diller + Scofidio’s multimedia installation in Room 120 of the Budget Inn, but even after permissions were granted, two installations—the cemetery for a Hispanic Catholic parish church and a lake on a nearby Indian Pueblo—were dismantled in the opening days, speeding up the Biennial’s ephemeral quality.





















