Community through Making

Community through Making brought together local and Peruvian artists to explore how art shapes healthy and vibrant communities. The installation was a conversation across borders, highlighting three collaborative projects that paired local artists and artists from Peru for 10-day residencies in conjunction with the exhibition Crafting Memory: The Art of Community in Peru. This exhibition in the Gallery of Conscience experimented with community curation, filling the gallery with video, stories, and artworks as created and told by museum program participants over the course of 18 months.

Places of Memory, paired members of two Indigenous women-led organizations: Tewa Women United (Española, New Mexico) and the National Association of the Families of the Abducted, Detained, and Disappeared of Peru/ANFASEP (Ayacucho, Peru) to explore the culturally specific ways they use art to heal community and individual trauma. Street Art and Activism, was a convening of muralists, printers, and painters whose work engages contemporary social issues with a focus on public visibility. Rivers of Plastic brought together sculptors Aymar Ccopacatty (Aymara) and Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara), who both see their home landscapes being transformed by plastic waste and use sculpture to open conversations about this intrusive and persistent material.

Throughout the course of the exhibition, Alas de Agua Art Collective created a mural inside the museum; students at the Kha’p’o Community School at Santa Clara Pueblo created sculptures from recycled materials; and local and Peruvian artists created a mural in a neighborhood in Santa Fe’s Southside.

The exhibition was on view from January 6, 2019 through May 4, 2020. It has now been made into a virtual exhibition that you can explore online.