This event has passed.

Critical Mass Roundtable Discussion

Name: Critical Mass Roundtable Discussion
Start: 2023-08-08T17:00:00-06:00
End: 2023-08-08T19:00:00-06:00
Location: Center for Contemporary Arts

August 8 @ 5:00 pm

Critical Mass, the two-gallery exhibition on display at CCA through August 16, take as its subject the meeting of the nuclear scientists and Pueblo people at the home of Edith Warner during the making of the first bomb at Los Alamos.

CCA is pleased to invite everyone to a roundtable discussion about the people, places, history, and issues that inspired the making of the photoworks in Meridel Rubenstein’s exhibition Critical Mass. Meridel Rubenstein created Critical Mass between 1989 and 1993 with her collaborators, Ellen Zweig and Steina and Woody Vasulka.

This event is co-produced by CCA, Turner Carroll Gallery and Axle Contemporary.The discussion, moderated by Tonya Turner Carroll, will take place in CCA’s Muñoz-Waxman Gallery.

Invited participants will include Alicia Inez Guzman, Roshi Joan Halifax, Josie Lopez, Meridel Rubenstein, Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez, and Rebecca Solnit. Read more about them below.

Admission: Pay what you can

Guest bios:

Alicia Inez Guzman

Raised in the northern New Mexican village of Truchas, Alicia Inez Guzmán has written about histories of place, identity, and land use in New Mexico. She brings this knowledge to her current role covering the nuclear industry, focusing on the impact of nuclear weapons expansion at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, nuclear waste storage and other critical issues. The former senior editor of New Mexico Magazine, Alicia holds a Ph.D. in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester in New York. She is currently an investigative reporter for Searchlight New Mexico.

Joan Halifax

Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, Founder and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a social activist, author, and in her early years was an anthropologist at Columbia University (1964-68) and University of Miami School of Medicine (1970-72). She is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions and medical centers around the world. Her vision for the Zen Center embraces comprehensive Buddhist studies , meditation, service, dharma art, and environmental action as integrated paths cultivating peace and interconnectedness.

Josie Lopez

Josie Lopez has been Head Curator at the Albuquerque Museum for almost 5 years. Her Phd is from UC Berkeley and MAT and BA from Brown University. A native Albuquerquean, she brings a local perspective to a prodigious array of art interests. Her research and curatorial projects have included examining art as a discursive agent in the political arena, the intersections of art and the environment, modern and contemporary Latin American art, 19th century France, Spain and Mexico, Spanish art from El Greco to Goya, and the history of New Mexican art.

Meridel Rubenstein

Meridel Rubenstein began her professional career in the early 1970s, evolving from photographer of single photographic images to environmental artist of extended photographic works, multi-media installations, and social practice that focus on intersections of nature and culture in relationship to ecological and social imbalance. Threads of ancient myth and the status of nature during periods of war have been woven throughout her projects for decades.

Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez

Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez is a native spirit-rooted social activist, community educator, and traditional black ware potter from the Tewa Pueblo of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. She is a fluent Tewa language speaker and mentor for mind, body, heart and spirit. She has has dedicated her life to working on culture, the environment, and social change. She was one of the founders of Tewa Women United in 1989. She’s organized with rural and Indigenous women at the UN Committee on the Status of Women, testified at New Mexico public hearings on Los Alamos National Lab’s devastating impact on health and environment. She is an organizer of the Gathering for Mother Earth, an annual event, started in 1996, as a celebration of cultural ways to share love and gratitude for Mother Earth, offering the community an opportunity to come together for eco-systemic revival and revolution.

Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit ia a writer, historian, activist, and the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. Her books include Savage Dreams, Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and recently launched the climate project Not Too Late.

Tonya Turner Carroll

Along with her husband Michael, she is the co-founder of Turner Carroll Gallery, here in Santa Fe in 1991, and Container, a new exhibition space here Santa Fe. Tonya previously worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Israel Museum, and Sotheby’s London. Her gallery has a strong commitment to women artists, feminism, and world issues.

Image on event poster: The Meeting courtesy of the Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM