New Worlds: New Mexico Women to Watch 2024

June 22, 2024 – September 28, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 22, 2024 | 6-8pm

516 ARTS and the New Mexico State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (New Mexico Women in the Arts/NMC) present New Worlds: New Mexico Women to Watch 2024. Guest curated by Nancy Zastudil, the exhibition features New Mexico-based artists Nikesha Breeze, Szu-Han Ho, Eliza Naranjo Morse, Jennifer Nehrbass, and Rose B. Simpson. New Worlds acts as a site for embracing individual and communal positions of power and personhood, with an eye toward what’s next. The exhibition features a diverse range of mediums including sculpture, painting, multimedia installations, and lithography.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA)’s Women to Watch exhibition series’ seventh installment—A New World: Women to Watch 2024—features underrepresented and emerging women artists from around the nation. The NMWA relies on regional contemporary curators to suggest a short list of artists working within a chosen theme. For the 2024 exhibition (April 14 - Aug 11, 2024), the Washington D.C. museum invited Albuquerque-based independent curator, writer, and editor Nancy Zastudil to serve as the consulting curator for New Mexico. The NMWA selected artist Eliza Naranjo Morse. The presentation of all five nominees at Albuquerque’s 516 ARTS equitably celebrates, promotes, and supports all of the artists.

The artwork selected offers a ripple of responses to questions posed by the NMWA parent exhibition, “When women artists envision a different world, how does that look? How have our societal conditions impacted artists’ visions for the future or inspired them to create alternative current realities?”

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Exhibition Tour with Nancy Zastudil and Jennifer Nehrbass – Saturday, July 13, 2pm 
Gain deeper insight behind the concepts and themes in New Worlds with curator Nancy Zastudil and artist Jennifer Nehrbass in this special exhibition tour through the 516 ARTS gallery space.

516 WORDS: A Mutiny of Morning Live Reading with Nikesha Breeze – Thursday, August 8, 6pm
Breeze will read from their published, powerful A Mutiny of Morning: Reclaiming the Black Body from the 'Heart of Darkness'—where they have taken pages from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and made the words their own.

Know Your Rights: 2SLGBTQ+ Activism in New Mexico – Thursday, September 12, 6pm
Learn about the rights of 2SLGBTQ+ identifying individuals within the state of New Mexico with artist Szu-Han Ho, ACLU New Mexico Litigation Manager Lalita Moskowitz, trans activist Lazarus Letcher, and drag performer Kayla Chigada. Panel organized by the fronteristxs collective.