Author: Alicia Inez Guzmán

belonging/unbelonging, contemporary art, LAND, stories on land

Rafa Esparza’s ‘Brown Matter’ Part I: When the Building Blocks of Home Inhabit the Whitney


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In northern New Mexico, adobe is a fact; homes made of sun-dried bricks pepper the high desert landscape. I grew up in an adobe home. It belonged to my great-grandmother, Juanita, and her husband, Rosenaldo. The walls were over twelve inches thick, bulbous and uneven, finished on the interior and white washed. So thick were

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stories on land

Sharing Scarcity: Why The Ancient Ethos of Hispanic Water Democracies Matters


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This was originally given as a talk–a personal story and an aesthetic point of departure–for New York-based mixed-media artist, Christine Howard Sandoval, at Parsons School of Design on February 10, 2017. I present Christine’s words, here. During the fall of 2016 I was awarded an artist residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI) for

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LAND

Tierra o Muerte


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Just before entering Tierra Amarilla, a small town in northern New Mexico located along the Chama River, drivers are greeted by a handmade billboard proclaiming Tierra o Muerte. Perhaps greet is the wrong word. It might be better to say that the phrase is thrust into one’s awareness. It cuts: land or death.  Scrawled in thick capital letters, the

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