SANTA FE — Each third weekend in August, New Mexico’s capital turns into a hub of Indigenous creativity for the Santa Fe Indian Market, hosted by the Southwestern Affiliation for Indian Arts (SWAIA). This yr, the air felt charged as lightning propelled down from monsoon-filled clouds at the beginning of the weekend, but it surely didn’t take lengthy for the skies to clear. For its 103rd version, over 1,000 artists from greater than 200 tribal nations showcased works round Santa Fe Plaza on Saturday and Sunday, drawing greater than 100,000 attendees from all over the world.
Traditionally, the Santa Fe Indian Market has advanced to satisfy artists’ wants in tandem with shifting bureaucratic tides, and funding cuts, censorship, and useful resource extraction have been subjects of dialog. Posters wheatpasted across the Plaza alluded to lingering political tensions concerning the town’s dependence on cultural tourism and Santa Fe Indian Market’s ethnographic origins.
“There’s loads in danger this yr,” Jamie Schulze (Northern Cheyenne/Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), government director of SWAIA, informed Hyperallergic. She emphasised that gathering in neighborhood is a crucial method to change info and strengthen intertribal connections.
Schulze mentioned that many artists credit score the market as a foundational early-career catalyst. Official programming has expanded to incorporate a burgeoning movie pageant and a style present debuting cutting-edge couture from acclaimed Indigenous designers. These feats of organizational planning are steered by a small staff of girls, most of whom are Native.
Winners throughout 10 classifications on this yr’s Better of Present juried exhibition have been introduced at a reception on Friday afternoon. Regina Free (Chickasaw) obtained the singular award and Better of Sculpture for “Windswept (Bison)” (2025), a contemplative bison bust constructed out of upcycled supplies.
For Carmen Selam (Yakama Nation), who was exhibiting an array of work, prints, and jewellery, this was her first yr taking part. As a queer modern artist, she mentioned the sensation of belonging throughout the market’s wealthy creative custom was extremely gratifying. “Native folks, we’re a dwelling tradition, and our tradition isn’t static,” she mentioned. “So I really like being part of this.”
Different artists spoke to artmaking’s capability for therapeutic. Melissa Freeman (Chickasaw/Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), one other first-timer, was thrilled to obtain a second-place ribbon within the Textiles classification for the garment she crafted to honor her late father: a Choctaw diamond costume that drew passersby with its hanging black brocade and iridescent beads.
“It’s been an awesome expertise to come back right here and see so many artists — and to have the ability to show my work and truly place,” she informed Hyperallergic. A couple of blocks away, Lonnie Vigil (Nambé Pueblo) spoke about his expertise working with micaceous clay during the last 40 years as an ongoing follow of meditation and introspection.
Hiro Money (Diné), a painter from Gallup, New Mexico, and a scholar on the Institute for American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, offered a collection of huge summary canvases. Black metallic and punk music are vital influences on his work, paying homage to a collaboration between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jaune Fast-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) if the late painters had teamed as much as design a Misfits album cowl.
Money remarked on the artwork world’s tendency to view Indigenous artists by way of a constricted lens. “Although I’m Native American, my work doesn’t need to be categorized as ‘Indian artwork,’” he mentioned. His message for different artists was to “do what you wish to do and simply kick ass at it.”
Artistic seeds dispersed by the market yr after yr have bloomed right into a city-wide ecosystem of commerce, commerce, performances, style reveals, and multidisciplinary exhibitions. But in a municipality closely depending on cultural tourism with over 250 galleries, solely a handful are Native-owned, in keeping with unbiased curator Jamie Herrell (Cherokee).
Of those brick-and-mortar strongholds, Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) debuted New Mythos on Thursday night at her gallery area within the Railyard, co-curated with Herrell and that includes eight various Indigenous artists. Niman Advantageous Artwork, established in 1990 by the Namingha household of Hopi-Tewa artists, offered a brand new number of works by Dan, Arlo, and Michael Namingha of their gallery close to the Plaza on Friday.
Elsewhere in Santa Fe, a panel with Romero, Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), Nicholas Galanin (Sitka, Tlingit, Unangax̂), and Tony Abeyta (Diné) coincided with one other exhibition exploring humor as an act of Indigenous resistance. Solo exhibitions by Diego Medina (Piro-Manso-Tiwa) and Marcus Xavier Chormicle (Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, second lineal descendant) opened alongside a pop-up market and free e-book truthful organized by NDN Women E-book Membership.
On Friday and Sunday night, folks shuttled out to Tesuque for the experimental Malinxe opera, directed by Autumn Chacon (Diné/Chicana) for the continuing twelfth SITE Santa Fe Worldwide. Scored by Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), the conjectural, asynchronous reimagining of La Malinche and La Llorona folklore starred Marisa Demarco and Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band Choctaw/Cherokee). IAIA’s Museum of Modern Native Artwork (MoCNA) hosted its annual Scholar and Latest Graduate Artwork Market in its museum courtyard north of the Plaza and the brand new multimedia exhibition Breaking Floor: Artwork & Activism in Indigenous Taiwan.
Lengthy earlier than Europeans arrived within the Americas, O’ga P’ogeh Owingeh (now referred to as Santa Fe) was a website of change for Indigenous folks throughout the Americas. It stays an vital cultural nexus for Tewa folks, which embody the Pueblos of Nambé, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Ohkay Owingeh, Santa Clara, and Tesuque. At the moment, as Indigenous folks all through america face new threats to land sovereignty and belief tasks, the Santa Fe Indian Market continues to develop, opening portals of alternative for artists inside its ever-expanding orbit.
