Lehuakuea, Puka Komo ‘Ekahi: Portal to Grant Permission, 2024. Earth pigments hand-painted on kapa. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Lehuakuea

Kincentric Ecologies presents the work of Indigenous artists who work harmoniously within the natural environment, often using traditional techniques. Framing ecological interactions as relational rather than extractive, Kincentric Ecologies stands as a point of contrast to otherwise exclusionary “eco-art” and “land art” movements. The exhibition at 516 Arts brings to light local environmental issues through the lens of Indigenous artists, honoring the historical relationship between land and culture.

The project began with two New Mexico–based artists: Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash) and Michael Namingha (Ohkay Owingeh/Hopi). For years Fragua’s primary medium was abalone, but climate change and subsequent regulatory restrictions led her to shift to papermaking and sculpture. Fragua’s work will be in conversation with works by Namingha, a photographer who documents environmental change and the impacts of resource extraction, and mounts his photographs on shaped acrylic utilizing a photo-screenprinting sand process to evoke pottery fragments that have been pieced together. The project will also feature works by Ian Kuali’i (Kanaka Maoli/Mescalero Apache descent), Lehuaukea (Kanaka Maoli), Mikayla Patton (Oglala Lakota), and Porifirio Gutierrez (Zapotec-American), whose artistic practices are rooted outside of New Mexico but overlap with regional concerns. Ortiz will also include work by Dakota Mace (Diné) and Margarita Paz-Pedro (Laguna Pueblo).

Ortiz’s curatorial research is informed by Native scholars with deep ties to New Mexico’s Indigenous communities. Public programs will be developed in collaboration with Pueblo Action Alliance and the Land Based Learning program at Native American Community Academy.

Michael Namingha, Yupkovi, 2023. Acrylic and enamel ink silk screen with acetate powder and hand-applied soil in a shaped panel. Commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy the artist

Dakota Mace, Hadootł’izh (Blue Area), 2024. Installation view in SITE Santa Fe, February 28, 2025–May 19, 2025. Courtesy Brad Trone. Photo: Brad Trone

Olivia Amaya Ortiz serves as Curator at 516 Arts. She has worked to facilitate museum education, community outreach initiatives, artist programs, and public art projects at organizations including New Mexico Arts (Santa Fe), the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) (Santa Fe), Masley Gallery at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), Tucson Museum of Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson (MOCA Tucson). As a curator and writer, she seeks to reconcile essentialist narratives of identity by advancing relationships to the poetics of representation, land, decolonial pedagogy, collaborative programming, and cultural revitalization. Amaya Ortiz is a contributing writer to Southwest Contemporary and a 2025 recipient of the A&L Berg Foundation Early Stage Arts Professionals (ESAP) Fellowship. She holds a BFA from the University of Arizona and an MA from the University of Arizona.

Pavel Pyś, Walker Art Center