We’ve Been Gathering Places, 2024 IAIA MFA in Studio Arts Exhibition
form & concept center
435 S Guadalupe St
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Opens 5/10/24 and runs through 6/15/24
FREE
Artists
Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway (Nakota/Cree and Saulteaux from White Bear First Nation)
Leah Mata Fragua (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (Northern Chumash))
Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu (Gingrich(Koyukon Athabascan & Iñupiaq)
Lozen Haozous (Fort Sill Apache)
Mekko Harjo (Shawnee, Muscogee, Seminole, Jewish and an enrolled member of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma)
Kéyah Henry (Diné)
Graci Horne (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Standing Rock Nation)
Daisy Trudell-Mills (Xicana, Santee Dakota, Jewish)
We’ve Been Gathering Places, the title of this year’s thesis exhibition for the MFA in Studio Arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, will fill form & concept’s 10,000-square-foot space in the Santa Fe Railyard with new media installations; large-scale wall sculptures, paintings and photographs; multichannel new media works; and interactive displays that explore cultural, ancestral and community identity, environmentalism, and indigeneity.
“There are references to places in the exhibition – a hogan, iconic earthworks, specific landforms,” says Mario Caro, the Director of MFA in Studio Arts at IAIA. “But the students are also identifying their cohort and themselves as gathering places – for ideas, experiences and histories that flow out into discrete material vessels and sprawling installations.”
The exhibition is a culmination and celebration of two years of rigorous studies by the low-residency program’s graduating cohort, a group of eight artists who span North America, from Southcentral Alaska to Western Canada to Santa Fe, New Mexico and beyond.
“It’s an honor to host We’ve Been Gathering Places, especially after bearing witness to the evolution of the MFA in Studio Arts Program since its inception in 2021,” says Jordan Eddy, Director of form & concept. “This exhibition reflects the remarkable geographic and cultural range of program participants, but it’s also a portrait of a community that has grown increasingly enmeshed through mutual inspiration and critique. This show holds individual thesis projects, but they undeniably rise in chorus.”
