Glimpse, Gaze, Gather, and Gasp

_{Featured image: Rose B. Simpson, Genesis Squared, 2019, ceramic, steel, mixed media, 77 x 23 x 23 inches}

The Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe and the New Mexico State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts present Glimpse, Gaze, Gather, and Gasp, a group exhibition that centers five New Mexico-based women artists. Works from Nikesha Breeze, Szu-Han Ho, Eliza Naranjo Morse, Jennifer Nehrbass, and Rose B. Simpson will be installed in CCA’s Muñoz Waxman Gallery, examining how societal conditions have impacted artists’ visions for the future or inspired them to create alternative current realities.

This exhibition is presented in anticipation of A New World – Women to Watch 2024, an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington D.C. All five of the artists featured at CCA are nominated for inclusion in NMWA’s 2024 show and one will be selected by NMWA. CCA and the New Mexico State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts have worked closely together in partnership to produce this exhibition curated by independent editor, writer, and curator Nancy Zastudil.

Glimpse, Gaze, Gather, and Gasp is a project that increases the representation of New Mexico-based women artists through three public-facing components: an exhibition at CCA, an exhibition catalog, and public programs. The project offers a ripple of responses to the questions of A New World: “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?”

Originally from Portland, Oregon Nikesha Breeze lives and works in the high desert of Taos, New Mexico, on the unceded land of the Taos Pueblo People. Nikesha is an African American descendant of the Mende People of Sierra Leone, and Assyrian American Immigrants from Iran. Nikesha has shown work both nationally and internationally, featured in the MOCADA Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts Brooklyn, The Albuquerque Museum, University Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, NkyinKyim Museum of Ghana and various galleries and art fairs across the globe. In 2021 Nikesha’s, 5000 sg ft solo exhibition FOUR SITES OF RETURN, gained national acclaim and was featured in American Art Collector, Hyperallergic, Metalsmith Magazine and the New York Times. Nikesha was awarded national recognition at the 2018 International ARTPRIZE exhibition, winning the juried 3D Grand Prize Award as well as the Contemporary Black Arts Award, for their sculptural installation: 108 Death Masks: A Communal Prayer for Peace and Justice. 

Szu-Han Ho’s work in performance, sound, and installation explores the relationship between bodies and sites of memory. She often works collaboratively, through collective action, structured improvisation, and group composition. Recent projects include Shelter in Place, a sculptural installation and performance inspired by her family’s history in Taiwan, and part of a larger project to explore interwoven histories, geographies, and memory through performance and the affective weight of materials. Szu-Han lives and works in Tiwa Territory (Albuquerque, NM) and is a founding member of the fronteristxs collective. She is currently an associate professor in Art & Ecology in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico.

Eliza Naranjo Morse is a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, where she is currently based. Her work engages drawing, land, collaboration, sculpture, and writing. She receives an ongoing education from her extended family and holds a Bachelor Degree in Art from Skidmore College. She works mostly locally and has traveled internationally for various forms of creative knowledge gathering and sharing. Naranjo Morse has collaborated with the School for Advanced Research, the Coe Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, and Praksis, Oslo. As well as the teams of Always Becoming, SITE Santa Fe, the Poeh Cultural Center, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the ongoing collaboration of creative expressions and practical tasks she participates in with her immediate and extended family. Her work has been exhibited at Lucky Number Seven, the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, 2008.

Jennifer Nehrbass is a painter living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was born in West Bend, Wisconsin in 1970. She received her B.S. in Art and Textile Design from the University of Wisconsin, a MA in Painting from New York University, and a MFA in painting from the University of New Mexico. She spent 10 years working as a Design Dir. at Ralph Lauren before pursuing her art career. Her work is represented by Brunnhofer Gallery in Linz, Austria, Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, and Visions West in Denver. Her work is in many private collections in the United States and Europe. Nerhbass’ paintings focus on style as a sublime element of tension within beauty. Thematically they evoke modern dilemmas of what it means to see and be seen in a manner that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary. Ambiguity, realism, and fantasy play atmospherically in a narrative moment akin to magic realism. Her paintings speak to forbidden thoughts and desires and suggest something that is denied to the viewer. What the paintings yield is an intimacy of time and place that meanders through rich details and nuanced perplexity-bafflement being necessary to the experience of viewing as is delicate reasoning.

Rose B. Simpson is a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, NM. Her work engages ceramic sculpture, metals, fashion, performance, music, installation, writing, and custom cars. She received an MFA in Ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design in 2011, an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018, is collected in museums across the continent, and has exhibited internationally. She lives and works from her home at Santa Clara Pueblo, and hopes to teach her young daughter how to creatively engage the world.

About the Curator

Nancy Zastudil is an independent editor, writer, and curator working toward equitable representation in and access to the arts. Most recently, she was assistant editor at Hyperallergic, and from 2018 to 2021, she was gallery director at Tamarind Institute where she curated exhibitions around themes of identity, belonging, and narrative. 

Previously, Zastudil was administrative director of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation, owner of Central Features Contemporary Art, and associate director of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston. Zastudil has edited numerous artist books, monographs, and exhibition catalogs, and her writing has appeared in Arts + Culture Texas, Art Ltd., Art Lies, Dance Houston, Edible New Mexico, Hyperallergic, Southwest Contemporary, and more. She received her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts in 2007 and her BFA in Painting and Drawing from The Ohio State University in 2001.