Alex De Vore
When the artist Georgia O’Keeffe first started coming to New Mexico in the earlier part of the 1900s, she famously quipped, ”When I got to New Mexico, that was mine.” The Indigenous Tewa folks living here at the time might have begged to differ, of course, but the quote has floated around since then in nebulous fashion, serving as a reminder of the colonialist mindset. In the present, if you’ve spent any time within the Santa Fe arts scene in recent years, surely you’re at least somewhat familiar with Santa Clara artist Jason Garcia (Okuu Pin). By straddling the worlds of traditional, contemporary and pop arts, Garcia paints a picture of the past and present New Mexico while exploring various media to great effect. This week at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, however, Garcia tackles artistry from the other side of the fence as a co-curator of Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country alongside the museum’s Luce Curator of Art and Social Practice Bess Murphy. The show features artists, scholars and culture-bearers hailing from all six Tewa pueblos in the region, and we spoke with Garcia to learn a little more about that ahead of the opening (4 pm Friday, Nov. 7. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 217 Johnson St., (505) 946-1000, okeeffemuseum.org). This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Alex De Vore)
Let’s talk about O’Keeffe quotes about how New Mexico belonged to her. Is this show a response to—or maybe an antidote to—that colonialist mindset?
It’s part of that in the sense that the show originally grew out of a panel presentation in 2020 called This is Not O’Keeffe Country. That’s when the seed was planted. The panel was moderated by Alicia Inez Guzmán, Corrine Sanchez of Tewa Women United, and Christina Castro of Three Sisters Collective. We talked about O’Keeffe, we talked about the landscape—about this being a Tewa landscape…we talked about settler colonialism. Then, about two years ago, there was a grant application that had a Native artists applying…a Shift Grant from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. We had applied for that, and part of it was we had to partner with an institution, and that’s what made me approach the O’Keeffe Museum. Knowing Bess Murphy, who I’d worked with at the Coe Center, had just started at the O’Keeffe—we applied for the grant. And we didn’t get it, but the idea had already been planted, and the museum said to just do the exhibition. We already had the idea that it was going to be a collaborative exhibition with artists and scholars from each of the pueblos. We got a solid group of 12 collaborators; all different ages; every generation.
You obviously have a long and storied history showing in exhibits and galleries. What was it like being on the other side of the process as a co-curator?
It was interesting in the sense of thinking about the theme of the exhibition and the invitation to the Tewa artists and scholars—talking with them individually about the project and knowing their work and thinking of how it would fit within the exhibition or maybe not fit. Some of the artists and scholars were kind of like, ‘Why me? My work doesn’t particularly fit,” but as we started talking about the land, essentially, they saw how it fit.
Working with the museum and Bess, with staff…working with all the different people over the last two years and seeing the financial side; looking for money to help fund the exhibition and participating stipends for the collaborators—plus the staff press, the facilities, the curation staff, the collections manager, the exhibition…the deadlines? Intense. Being an artist and understanding deadlines in a way like, ‘we can push this out,” is one thing, but as a curator, though, it was more, ‘our deadline is our deadline.’ I was happy, though, and everybody was good about it.
It was also about what do I want from the opening exhibition? We’re having Ray Naranjo bring his food truck Manko. We have a dance group from Ohkay Owingeh doing a dance presentation. My son Jacob Shije will be playing music with his trio. Working with all the collaborators has been the greatest joy—plus Bess Murphy and the museum staff. We’ve had visits to Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch and we’ve been out to each of the different artists’ homes and studios to talk about what they’re working on. And there are still continued plans for panel presentations, programming, possibly a symposium. We’re looking at the artists teaching at the local Tewa schools, too, because it’s an ongoing, continuous process. We’re looking at hosting a closing exhibition as well. One of the things that has been great is that the admission for the exhibition will be free for members of Indigenous nations for the entire run of the exhibition. The museum opened in 1996, and up until three years ago, I’d never set foot inside. Part of that is the price of admission, so we’ll have that free admission every day through the end of the show on Sept. 7, 2026.
Does O’Keeffe herself or her work factor into the show?
It does, because one, we’re in the museum, and also there are images and portraits. She appears in different pieces. In my piece “This is Tewa Country,” she’s front and center, and that’s the first piece that will greet the visitors. There are at least 10-plus O’Keeffe paintings in the exhibition, and most of them do have the Pedernal in them, and some pieces are responses that reflect the artist-collaborators in the show. The things she said about New Mexico, like how if she could paint the Cerro Pedernal enough, God would give it to her—how the land was hers—looking at that…maybe originally that was the first thought, but if you came into the museum and every single piece was like that, that’s boring. We have more thought, more dialogue, more criticism, more discussion.
And there are a lot of hopes. We love this land, but we know we’re not going to get it back, like, we’re not going to get Santa Fe back. But it’s also not ‘you’ are on stolen land, we’re all on stolen land. Part of it, too, is knowing that Tewa people are still here. We’re still living, breathing. There’s the reassertion of that, and taking pride in where we live. It’s beautiful here, it’s not like anyplace else.
