Under the curator Ekow Eshun, the upcoming 13th edition of the Site Santa Fe International Biennial, There Are Other Worlds (11 June 2027-10 January 2028), will aim to reflect how artists open up new ways of understanding the world, potentially inspiring connection and kinship amid the complexity of our times. The exhibition’s citywide programming will span more than six venues, bringing together more than 40 artists from over 15 countries. The biennial is due to include new commissions by the US artists Cauleen Smith, Sanford Biggers and Edgar Arceneaux, the New Mexico-based Diné artist Raven Chacon and the Canadian artist Lotus Kang.
Founded in 1995, Site Santa Fe is one of the US’s key contemporary art events, showcasing international artists while building on New Mexico’s history and social fabric. Eshun—who chairs the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square and is the curator of the touring British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers (touring the UK until June 2028)—is drawing inspiration from the region.
“New Mexico has a layered history, including colonial settlements, but also in the 20th century it had artistic communities that found something here that allowed them to think with expansiveness,” Eshun tells The Art Newspaper. “It is the site of settlement, world-making and self-discovery.”
Site Santa Fe, Marlene Nathan Meyerson Auditorium entrance Photo: Shayla Blatchford, 2024; courtesy Site Santa Fe
Beyond New Mexico, Eshun’s vision explores how artists challenge, interpret and shape reality. “We live in a time of divisiveness, uncertainty, inequality and environmental crisis,” he says. “I am inspired by how, in contrast, artists hold complexity and contradictions, inviting us to look beyond binary positions and consider other ways of seeing the world.” These might include imaginative, psychological, emotional and sensory worlds.
The sprawling exhibition is structured into three sections, the curator explains, conceived as “interlocking territories”. The first, “Worlds Beyond”, explores sensory and psychological perception, drawing on the legacy of the Transcendental Painting Group that was active in New Mexico in the 1930s and 40s. “I am interested in how artists look beyond the physical world and can be inspired to think metaphysically, psychologically and emotionally,” Eshun says. He cites the participating Danish Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, who thinks with scientific precision while creating works that have both sensorial and emotional impacts.
The exhibition’s second section,“Worlds in Common”, draws on New Mexico’s history of utopian settlements to explore “how artworks may enable us to move beyond hierarchies of power or status and conjure connection or kinship, finding imaginative ways in which we can relate to each other”, Eshun says. He cites the work of Chacon as an example, which uncovers histories of displacement in the Americas, but also turns to connection and memory as routes to reimagining assertions of place.
Tavares Strachan's Black Madonna (Louise Little and Malcolm X) (2022) Courtesy the artist and Perrotin. Photo: Claire Dorn; courtesy Site Santa Fe
The exhibition’s third section,“Worlds Alive”, will focus on interactions with nature, considering “the planet as a living territory where all the creatures may have a say in how we live collectively”, Eshun says. He is particularly interested in artists who imagine a relationship with the planet beyond extractivism and grounded in connection across organisms. The participating Colombian artist Delcy Morelos, for instance, reflects on the earth as a physical and ethical territory and a space for aesthetic adventure.
The line-up of participating artists, spanning generations and geographies, reflects the curator’s intention to create a locally rooted biennial with an international scope. “The biennial exists in conversation, not isolation,” Eshun says, adding that community programming will be key. Nearly half the artists are from the US, including Arthur Jafa and Nan Goldin, while five, such as the Indigenous artists Rose B. Simpson and Cannupa Hanska Luger, are based in New Mexico. The exhibition will also include a large contingent of international participants, such as Louise Giovanelli (UK), John Akomfrah (Ghana/UK), Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (Chile), Shilpa Gupta (India) and Tavares Strachan (Bahamas), among others.
While touching on pressing issues, Eshun hopes the biennial will also carry a sense of possibility, empathy and even optimism. Artists, he says, “offer no answers but may open new ways to see, imagine and engage with the present”.
- 13th Site Santa Fe International: There Are Other Worlds, 11 June 2027-10 January 2028, various venues, Santa Fe, New Mexico