“It’s like we’ve been telling the same story from different sides,” poet Tatja Lucia (Kiowa Apache) says, describing her creative partnership with photographer Tasnim Sara. “Tas is my creative soulmate.”
Together, Lucia (aka Natachee Momaday Grey, the scribe behind the 2023 poetry book Silver Box) and Sara have spent the past five years blurring the line between friendship and collaboration while turning shared experiences of loss and a love for New Mexico into something neither could have made alone. After years of work, that shared vision comes together in the upcoming show Sin Miedo at Foto Forum Santa Fe.
Tatja Lucia & Tasnim Sara
The joint exhibition is less a collection of works than a shared love letter to the place that raised them. Through film photographs that document and romanticize daily life and poems that ride the line between the earthly and the divine, the pair channel the beauty and complexity of New Mexico—a home that anyone from around here can tell you never quite lets go. In a city where the creative scene is increasingly shaped by transplants, the show arrives as a reminder that Santa Fe’s artistic energy still resonates within those who grew up here.
The exhibit title, Spanish for “Without Fear,” also describes the ways Lucia and Sara live and make art. Their connection began with an impromptu photo shoot in Madrid, New Mexico. That day, which they now refer to as an “adventure,” culminated in images they still show today and marked the start of a creative dialogue that hasn’t stopped since. On some level, it’s about seeing eye-to-eye. For both artists, New Mexico is more than a backdrop. Its land, people and cultures are central to the creative philosophy at the heart of Sin Miedo and is woven into everything they make. For some, the Land of Enchantment is a vacation destination; for those who call it home, the experience is far more complex and built from equal parts beauty, struggle and spirit. As a body, Sin Miedo aims to capture those human textures: the barefoot child in the arroyo, the ghost stories whispered on night drives.
In trés New Mexico fashion, nothing about Lucia and Sara’s process follows a rigid schedule. One might send a photo that sparks a poem, or perhaps a line of verse pulls Sara back behind the camera. More often, the work comes from simply living and experiencing the joys and challenges of motherhood, long drives through the desert and spontaneous adventures in the arid wilderness.
“It’s never like, ‘let’s sit down and make art,’” Lucia explains. “It’s more like, ‘let’s live some life and see what happens.’”
That natural approach, coupled with a shared trust that the work can and will evoke the emotional essence of the land that inspired it, defines the collaboration. For Lucia and Sara, self-doubt, over-editing and inauthenticity run counter to their purpose. In this way, Sin Miedo is more than a show title—it’s a mission statement. Their art also carries an unflinching sensuality.
“People sometimes call our work sexy,” Sara says, “but to us it’s just honesty, joy, pleasure, freedom. it’s not about performance.”
The forthcoming Foto Forum exhibition isn’t a neatly paired photo-and-poem series. Some pieces echo others directly, while some simply breathe the same air. Most of the faces in the images belong to friends who are slated to attend the opening night. The result feels less like an exhibit and more like an invitation into living relationships, where poems and portraits overlap like woven strands of hair. This fits in nicely with the Foto Forum ethos. The nonprofit gallery focuses on contemporary photography and emerging artists from the region.
“We want to support young, local artists as long as the art matches the quality we demand,” photographer educator and Foto Forum foudner Sage Paisner tells SFR. “The work Sara and Lucia were making was exactly what I was looking for.”
Paisner notes that meeting a true local in Santa Fe has become strangely rare—a new reality that resonates with Sara.
Growing up in Santa Fe, she learned early on how ambition can look “embarrassing.” Trying too hard, she says, meant being teased, so she learned to downplay her efforts. That instinct, she adds, contrasts sharply with the confidence of transplants now showing in galleries and hosting cultural events throughout Santa Fe.
“A lot of us who grew up here had to unlearn that chill-out mentality,” she muses. “But our perspective is different. We make art because it’s our life, not our résumé.”
Lucia agrees.
“In New Mexico, people are just doing cool stuff because that’s who they are,” she says.
Thus, what began as a collaboration between creatives became something harder to define. Lucia and Sara’s friendship is the art form itself now, and an ongoing exchange of care, curiosity and courage. Sin Miedo captures that current of two artists mirroring one another, building a shared mythology of home, love and the fearless act of being seen.
Sin Miedo Opening: 5-7 pm Friday, Nov. 7 (w/a poetry reading at 5 pm). Free. Foto Forum Santa Fe, 1714 Paseo de Peralta, fotoforumsantafe.com
