SK

E D

OU

TPU

TAC

TUA

L O

UTP

UT

FIN

AL

DE

SK

OK

S8 Santa Fe/North Friday, December 9, 2011

S8

COURTESY OF SITE SANTA FE

ABOVE: An installation view shows “The Fae Richards Photo Archive,” 1993-1996, a collection of photographs and text created by Zoe Leonard and Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 film, “The Watermelon Woman.” The installation is part of “The Archive” section of “Agitated Histories” at SITE Santa Fe.BELOW: An installation view shows Sam Durant’s “You Are on Indian Land: Show Some Respect” and “200 Years of White Lies,” two 2008 electric signs with vinyl text that are part of “Agitated Histories” at SITE Santa Fe.

“Agitated Histories”, curated by Irene Hoffman, Phillips director and chief curator at SITE Santa Fe, in collaboration with assistant curator Janet Dees, is an ambitious exhibition. Employing strategies of quotation, re-contextualization and re-enactment, most of the work is consciously positioned as political intervention within art historical narratives rather than being political in the activist sense, but the line is not always clear.

The work is divided into four separate, but related, themes: “The Archive” (work created in response to a specific historic archive), “The Reenactment” (work that restages historic

events), “The Persona” (work that interrogates the construction of iconic historic figures), and “The Intervention” (work that recalls historic events to highlight the present and caution about the future).

While most of the art is not confined to one category, it is those works engaging “The Archive” that are the most interesting, complex, and in some ways, problematic: Archives not only document lives, movements and events, but, in fact create historical narratives. Like the histories they construct, they are subjective. Many of the artists mined archives for source material while others interrogated the conceit of

the archive itself.

Based on photographic archives of African-American, Native American, and Aboriginal Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Sam Durant’s graphite drawings depict protest demonstrations, marches and sit-ins, thereby documenting the photo archives as well as the original events. At SITE, these photo-based illustrations are juxtaposed to large industrial lightboxes with vinyl texts copied from the hand-lettered signs carried by protestors in the drawings.

HARMONY HAMMONDFor the Journal

Art Matters

HARMONY HAMMOND For the Journal

Art MattersArt Matters

Harmony Hammond

For the Journal

q See EXHIBIT on PAGE S7

HISTORY SITE Santa Fe exhibit adds new context to past lives, movements, events

REFRAMING

ABQ Journal NorthFriday, December 9, 2011Reframing History by Harmony Hammond

SK

E D

OU

TPU

TAC

TUA

L O

UTP

UT

FIN

AL

DE

SK

OK

Santa Fe/North Friday, December 9, 2011 S7

S7

Installed in a fine art space, the texts — accusations such as “200 Years of White Lies” and “You are on Indian Land: Show Some Respect” — now several times removed from their original political context, function as aestheticized signs of activism interrupting the dominant narrative of Western art rather than activist signage (art in the service of activism) — however this changes when the same glowing signs are installed outside in public spaces. Given Santa Fe’s indigenous population and history of colonization, SITE’s decision to not install a lightbox on the outside of its building seems like a missed opportunity for “art and artists of the 99%” to join the conversation initiated by the Occupy/De-occupy movement’s encampment in the adjacent Railyard Park.

It’s not to say that one visual strategy is better than the other, but rather to note difference in meaning and possibility that follow shifts in presentation contexts. Take Mark Tribe’s Fort Huron Project from 2006-2009. Like Durant, Tribe reframes archival material documenting moments of political unrest. The Port Huron Project is a series of re-enactments of protest speeches from the Vietnam era. Tribe hired actors to deliver speeches by Stokely Carmichael, Cesar Chavez, Angela Davis and others, in locations where the original speeches were made, to an audience of “invited guests and passers by.” These performed speeches were videotaped.

At SITE, the Fort Huron Project is presented as a room-sized two-channel video installation with sound. Videos of re-enacted speeches by Carmichael, Chavez, and Davis are projected on two large screens — one focusing on the speaker, the other, the crowd of listeners, with the gallery viewer looking at both speaker and crowd from a distance –– occupying an awkward space between

intervention, art commodity and the potential of art as activist tool to shape the public imaginary. It’s Tribe’s intent that the speeches, while “removed decades from their original context, pose questions about the lack of political engagement and detached nature of political dissent today,” however, against the backdrop of the Occupy movement that has emerged in recent months, the videos remain in documentary mode, albeit one that suggests connection of dissenting voices across time and space.

A differently edited version of the Chavez speech playing on a small video monitor in the entry area of SITE, incorporates news media tropes. Because there is no sound, the text of the speech appears as captions on the screen. News media tropes

were also used in 2008 when excerpts from the Chavez and Davis speeches were screened on MTV’s oversized HD video screen in the heart of Times Square. In both cases, the “faux news coverage” format used to present archival speeches, had a feeling of news “happening live now.”

The Fae Richards Photo Archive (consisting of 78 gelatin silver prints, four chromogenic prints and a notebook of six pages of typescript), is a collaboration between Cheryl Dunye and Zoe Leonard. Dunye’s 1996 film “The Watermelon Woman” is about an emerging lesbian African-American filmmaker (played by Dunye) who is making a documentary about the lesbian black actress Fae Richards (aka Watermelon Woman), popular in the ’30s and ’40s. Richards is a

fictional character invented by Dunye in an effort to create an artistic lineage for her own cinematic practice. Leonard created the archival photographs of Richards featured in the film.

“The Watermelon Woman” was screened at the Center for Contemporary Arts Cinematheque in conjunction with “Agitated Histories,” but the “The Fae Richards Photo Archive” is displayed at SITE. Leonard and Dunye’s invention of “a photographic archive for a fictional figure whose life may have mirrored that of a real-life person of who there is no historical record ...” draws attention to fact that few records exist documenting the lives and work of black lesbian artists, thereby interrogating the political nature of archives — whose stories are preserved and whose aren’t?

Exhibit Adds New Contextfrom PAGE S8

If you goWHAT: “Agitated Histories”

WHERE: SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta

WHEN: Through Jan. 15

CONTACT: 989-1199 or www.sitesantafe.org

“The Port Huron Project (The Liberation of Our People, Angela Davis 1969/2008),” a 2006-2009 video piece by Mark Tribe, is part of “The Reenactment” section of “Agitated Histories” at SITE Santa Fe.

The Port Huron Project is a series of re-enactments of protest speeches from the Vietnam era. Tribe hired actors to deliver speeches by Stokely Carmichael, Cesar Chavez, Angela Davis and others, in locations where the original speeches were made, to an audience of “invited guests and passers by.”

SANTA FE CITY HALL, 200 Lin-coln Ave. “New Views of New Mexico,” photography by Will Karp, winner of this year’s top prize at the Santa Fe Arts Com-mission Exhibit. Through Dec. 31. Call 231-0054.

SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE, 1600 St. Michael’s Drive. Work related to New Mexico environ-mental issues. Through Dec. 16. Call 424-5050.

SANTA FE COMMUNITY GALLERY, Santa Fe Commu-nity Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy St. “Centennial,” exhibit/sale to feature Centen-nial Artists from the Museum of New Mexico Foundation shops. Through Jan. 27. Call 955-6705.

SANTA FE COMMUNITY COL-LEGE, Fine Arts Center, Room 711, 6401 Richards Ave. “Dia-log in the Arts,” a collaborative exhibit by teachers and their students. Through Jan. 23. Call 428-1501.

SANTA FE UNIVERSITY OF ART AND DESIGN, Fine Arts Gallery, Fogelson Library Center. “BRACE,” a senior thesis exhibition with works by Anne Kennedy and Gage Peer. Through Dec. 16. Call 473-6500.

JANE SAUER, 652 Canyon Road. “Charla Khanna: Plainsong,” embellished dolls. Through Dec. 14. Call 995-8513.

JANE SAUER, 652 Canyon Road. “New Bold & Surprising” works by John Dodd, Krista Harris, Patrick McGrath Muniz and Kent Townsend. Through Jan. 6. Call 995-8513.

SILVER SUN GALLERY, 656 Canyon Road. Paintings from books by Jesse Hummingbird, “Native American Night Before Christmas” and ““Native American Twelve Days of Christmas.” Through Jan. 3. Call 983-8743.

SITE SANTA FE, 1606 Paseo de Peralta. “Agitated Histo-ries,” a group exhibition of about 25 works by 15 artists creating a dialogue with his-toric figures, movements or events. Through Jan. 15. Call 989-1199.

ANDREW SMITH GAL-LERY, 122 Grant Ave. Ansel Adams “Gifts From New Mexico.” Through Dec. 30. Call 984-1234.

ALEXANDRA STEVENS GAL-

LERY OF FINE ART, 820 Canyon Road. “Small Ways to Be Thankful,” a holiday show with small works by gallery artists. Through Dec. 18. Call 988-1311.

WILLIAM R TALBOT FINE ART, 129 W. San Francisco St. “Sacred Mountains: Modern-ist Portraits of Taos Mountain, (1920-1979).” Through Jan. 14. Call 982-1559.

TOUCHING STONE, 539 Old Santa Fe Trail. “Within/With-out, Toubako (Ceramic Boxes) By Eight Artists.” Through Dec. 30. Call 988-8072.

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, 86 Old Las Vegas Highway. “Imag-es from the Past,” steel-acrylic petroglyphs for indoors and out. 983-2700.

ULI’S BOUTIQUE, 208 W. San Francisco St. Fernando Rivera with “gift sized” small works celebrating the feminine in bronze. Through Jan. 1. Call 986-0577.

VERVE GALLERY OF PHO-TOGRAPHY, 219 E. Marcy St. Works by the collaborative team of Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French and Jennifer B. Hudson. Through Dec. 31. Call 982-5009.

A WANDER OUT YONDER, Gallery Row, 2842 N.M. 14B, Madrid. A painting collabora-tion between Shelly Johnson and Lori Swartz, “This Mad and Beautiful Game,” plus sculp-ture by Christian Boyd. Through Feb. 3. Call 424-0814.

WEBSTER COLLECTION, 54½ Lincoln Ave. “Timeless Integrity — The New World Collection,” American Indian, pre-Columbian and tribal art, western paint-ings, sculpture and photo-graphs of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Call 954-9500.

LIZA WILLIAMS GALLERY, 806 Old Santa Fe Trail. Grand opening with works by Arlene Ladell, Leslie Folksman, Diana Bryer and others. Ongoing. Call 820-0222.

ZANE BENNETT CONTEMPO-RARY, 435 S. Guadalupe St. Affordable art group show with a variety of mediums including watercolors, prints, paintings and sculpture. Through Jan. 20. Call 982-8111.

ZAPLIN LAMBERT GALLERY, 651 Canyon Road. Harold Joe Waldrum: “Color, Form and Shadow.” Through Dec. 31. Call 982-6100.

ONGOING EXHIBITSfrom PAGE S6

Advertise in theVenue Menu!To list your restaurant

Call (505) 992-6291

Come See What'sOn Our Menus

FEA TURed menu

VegetalbeSamosa 3.95Crisp patties stuffed with spiced potatoes and green peas.

Spinach Paratha 2.95Freshly baked whole wheat bread stuffed with spinach and herbs.

Lamb Chops 17.95Marinated with herbs and spices, cooked in the tandoor oven over mesquite.

Fish Tandoori 19.95Mahi (Sea Bass) marinated and broiled over mesquite in the tandoor oven.

Mixed Grill Tandoori 19.95Combination of chicken, lamb, fish and prawns cooked in the tandoor oven.

Chiken Tikka Masala 11.95Boneless chicken baked in the tandoor with creamy tomato sauce and exotic herbs and spices.

Rogan Josh (lamb curry) 12.95A Kashmiri delicacy in a traditional sauce.

Karabi Lamb 13.95Lamb stir fried with bell peppers, onion, tomatoes and spices.

Karabi Prawns 14.95Prawns stir fried with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes and spices.

Saag Paneer 9.95Spinach sauted in exotic spices with homemade farmer's cheese.

ELTESORO

CAFESanbusco Market Center500 Montezuma #104Santa Fe, NM 87501

505-988-3886"Breakfast and Lunch All Day"

Hours: 8am-6pm

Innovative Regional Southwestern Cuisine,with over 2200 wines on the list, La Casa Senais one of Santa Fe’s most popular restaurants.

The Wine Shop features a large selectionof fine wines and is open from 11am-6pm,

Tuesday through Saturday.

Open daily for lunch 11:30am-3:00pm and dinner5:30-10:00pm. Sunday Brunch 11:00am-3:00pm.

125 East Palace Avenue988-9232

FINE DINING • LA CANTINA •WINE SHOPReservations Recommended

2621 Cerrillos Roadbetween U-Haul & Chevron

$3.99

After Scho

ol

Special!

A Local Place for Great Food!1820 Cerrillos Road

Fresh-from-scr

atch

SPANISH southwestern

southwestern

sushi sW Diner

NEW MEXICAN

Mediterranean

Santa Fewww.elmeson-SantaFe.com

927 West AlamedaSolana Center, Santa Fe, NM

505-982-3334

JAPANESE CUISINEBEER - WINE - SAKE

Mon-Thur LUNCH 11am-2:30pmDINNER 5pm-9pm

Fri 11am-9pmSaturday 12pm-9pm

Sunday 5pm-9pmTAKE OUT ALSO AVAILABLE

*Prices may have changed, see restaurant for details.

a comprehensive guide to santa Fe eateriesDon’t forget to mention that you found

their restaurant listing in the Venue MenumenuTo Advertise Call 992-6287NORTH/santa fe

Chef Owned • Made By Hand

Galisteo BistroKnown for its open kitchen, quality menuofferings, attentive service in a casual &comfortable downtown Santa Fe setting.

Dinner: Wednesday - Sunday5:00pm - 9:00pm

227 Galisteo St.Reservations: 505.982.3700

www.galisteobistro.com

JAPANESE

JAPANESE

3003 S. St. Francis Dr. #CSanta Fe, NM 87505

(505) 820-1930BUSINESS HOURS

Mon. - Sat.11:00am - 9:00pm

Sunday ClosedSushi • BBQ Teriyaki• Maki Roll • Bento

• Udon • Tempura • Bowl • Platter

Dine In/Take Out

Izmi SushiNow DowntownOn Marcy St.

Lunch 11:30 - 2 Mon-SatDinner at 5pm Nightly

505-424-1311izmisantafe.com

italian

NOW OPEN 10701 Corrales Blvd.321 W. San Francisco St., S.F3403 Central Ave., SE, ABQ

11225 Montgomery, NE, ABQIl Vicino, is a contemporary, casualTrattoria serving authentic, reasonablypriced wood-oven Pizza, unique entreeSalads, delicious Panini and bakedLasagna. Over 12 different wood-ovenPizzas and Calzones are offered daily.