Retrospective of Change, the 2021 Spring Senior Graduating Exhibition of the Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), is now available to view online.
This is the IAIA's third virtual exhibition that displays graduating seniors' work in a digital representation of the IAIA Balzer Contemporary Edge Gallery following the closure of the IAIA campus due to covid-19, according to the IAIA website.
"The reasoning behind these virtual exhibitions was purely COVID related," Mattie Reynolds, Balzer Contemporary Edge Gallery director said. "Last March, right before spring break, our administration decided we were going online for COVID reasons; that was halfway through our semester and our current graduating seniors and me and the other faculty who are involved in this exhibition had a major moment of panic and said how are we going to get these students to be able to present their artwork so they can check that graduation requirement off their list?"
Reynolds said that transitioning to a virtual exhibition was a significant obstacle for students who had previously created physical works, particularly for the first group of students who were ready to present their physical works and now needed to exhibit them virtually.
"It was rough for everybody involved," Reynolds said, "But the students there, they're really passionate about their work. They wanted it to be visible and they were willing to put in basically double the work, creating the physical work and then documenting it in a way that can be shared digitally."
Despite these challenges, graduating seniors were able to showcase their final projects in a virtual space by using the abilities of faculty and students across the campus to convert their physical works of art into a digital format.
"We tried to feature a wide range of the IAIA community," Reynolds said, "The majority of the artwork is student artwork but faculty, staff, admin, alumni, do exhibitions in the space and so it's kind of a community space more than just specifically a student space; but I would say the majority of the artwork is students'."
The 2021 Spring Senior Graduating Exhibition will exhibit artwork created by students from a variety of indigenous tribes, including the Navajo, Osage, Chickasaw, and Euchee.
In New Mexico, there are 23 Native American tribes; each tribe is a sovereign nation with its own unique government, way of life, customs, and culture, according to Newmexico.org.
Retrospective of Change will be on display until Jan. 1, 2025.