Conversaciones Con La Tierra: Esteban Cabeza de Baca + Heidi Howard is a place-based exhibition rooted in an expansive vision of color and form inspired by the land of Taos and its history. For the past fifteen years, Cabeza de Baca has been exploring new visions of the American landscape painting in plein-air in New Mexico where his ancestors have resided since before 1492. Howard is a gender non-conforming artist whose work focuses on the connections between our bodies and their environments. Their practice stems from observational portraits and expands into immersive spaces.
Together, Cabeza de Baca and Howard question tropes of the American culture. They work in collaboration, thinking about how the climate emergency necessitates practices that constantly fluctuate and adapt to other humans and to our environment. Through conversations with local New Mexicans who live on, work with, and give back to the land, Cabeza de Baca and Howard will impart these stories and experiences into their practices. They will open the boundaries of the museum, beginning by making site-specific paintings, side-by-side and collaboratively, in the square format that Cabeza de Baca has been using since 2010. These site-directed paintings will seed wall paintings and indoor and outdoor plant centered sculptures and installations that address the Harwood’s architecture, cultural history, and collection.
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Chaco, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artists and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Break onto the other side, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.
