Opening on October 6, SITE Santa Fe presents a thrilling look at 25 new and existing works by multidisciplinary Tlingit and Unangaxˆ artist Nicholas Galanin. Titled Interference Patterns, the exhibition will feature a selection of works made between 2006 through 2023, including video installation, sculpture, performance art, works on paper and installation.
SITE Santa Fe representatives share that this comprehensive collection is “celebrating Indigenous knowledge and reenvisioning legacies and consequences of colonization and occupation. Boldly and intentionally disrupting colonial narratives and fiction by centering Indigenous perspectives, Galanin’s varied works touch on the intersection of land and water, cultural erasure, forced assimilation, natural and forced migration, environmental violence and climate crisis with settler-colonial capitalism.”
Galanin succinctly adds that the exhibition reflects the way “natural patterns” are being interfered with. “These works connect to past, present and future generations in voice, experience and envisioned futures,” says the artist. “Many pieces offer multiple layers of entrance and engagement. This allows for different perspectives to join the conversation depending on willingness to experience and understand the context of the work. There are many things to access by engaging with my practice and work. There are no incorrect ways to get there.
In bold works like Infinite Weight, 2022, an installation and film that also includes a taxidermized wolf posed upside down from the ceiling, Galanin explains his message: “The absence of the living wolf is mirrored between image and object. It’s marginalized to exist only on the ceiling, while its inability to move is confirmed by time-lapse. The work itself is also a mirror, reflecting the extent to which colonization and settlement of [my] homeland has sought to capture and control what is determined valuable and to destroy or marginalize what is not…Wolves are inherently important to the survival of all life and healthy ecosystems in the lands to which they are Indigenous, yet their survival continues to be endangered by extractive practices stemming from unsustainable anthropocentric ideologies. The wolf in the work carries more than its own weight; it carries the weight and the waiting of all life determined less-than-valuable, critiquing the practice of devaluing and destroying life in favor of control and artifice.”
Other significant works include a wool and cotton American prayer rug titled Signal Disruption, created in 2020, which “calls for disrupting the sources of American political power and media supporting xenophobia and obliterating voices and rights of land, water and cultures throughout the world,” says Galanin. Exhibition attendees will also see White Flag, 2022, featuring a trimmed polar bear rug attached to a wooden pole, representing the global effects of human driven climate change; and the brand-new, participatory performance piece Neon American Anthem, that invites visitors to “‘scream until you can’t breathe’ in response to legislated violence and oppression by the United States on those inside and outside its borders,” explains SITE reps.