About SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas
SITElines signifies a radical rethinking of SITE Santa Fe’s signature biennial exhibition, originally established in 1995. It represents a collaborative structure for planning its biennials, a vision for continuity between biennials, a commitment to community and place, and a dedication to new and underrecognized perspectives. This new multidimensional approach—together with a strong geographic focus—redefines SITE’s role at the forefront of biennial exhibition making and proposes new curatorial frameworks for biennials globally.
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.
SITElines.2014
Unsettled Landscapes
A new biennial exhibition series that explores contemporary art from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego July 20, 2014 – January 2015 Opening Festivities July 17-19 SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas is a six-year commitment to a series of linked exhibitions with a focus on contemporary art and cultural production of the Americas. The exhibitions will take place in 2014, 2016, and 2018 and will be organized by a different team of curators, from locations throughout the Western Hemisphere. Through SITElines, SITE will establish a new programming hub called SITEcenter to generate connectivity between and during the exhibitions.
SITElines.2016
much wider than a line
SITElines.2016 opened on July 16, 2016 as the second installment in SITE Santa Fe’s reimagined biennial series with a focus on contemporary art from the Americas and featured 35 artists from 16 countries and 11 new commissions organized around intersecting 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.
This exhibition, entitled much wider than a line, was an articulation of the interconnectedness of the Americas and various shared experiences such as the recognition of colonial legacies, expressions of the vernacular, the influence of indigenous understandings, and our relationship to the land.
much wider than a line took its title from Leanne Simpson’s, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, a book about life ways of Nishnaabeg people. In her accounts of non-colonial conceptions of nationhood and sovereignty, it is the joint care taking required in the overlapping territorial boundaries between one Indigenous nation and another that are traditionally relationship-building. The relationships that emerge are, like the borders themselves, much wider than a line.
SITElines.2018
Casa tomada
SITE Santa Fe’s 2018 edition of SITElines, SITE’s biennial exhibition dedicated to new art from throughout the Americas, is entitled Casa tomada (House Taken Over), and is curated by a three-member team including: 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 Naomi Beckwith (Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago) as curatorial advisor.
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?
Learn more here.
The gallery below features images from the launch announcement events of SITElines in New York City and Santa Fe.
