Welcome to SALA DIAZ: An Artist-Centric Experimental Venue in San Antonio
Learn more about our incredible offsite community partner, and check out “The Only Certain Way,” a solo show currently on view from artist Joe Harjo.
When I try to explain the Operating System to people, and position our organization as a “hybrid arts nonprofit,” reactions can be mixed. More often than not, though, it means that following this interaction the illegibility of what I’ve just explained gets a retrofit, into something more recognizable (usually a “press,” because of our best known projects in publishing.)
But it’s so much more than that, and this means that it’s important for us to locate and be in communication with allies and partners seeking to build and establish similar spaces for exploration and creative growth, resisting and troubling boundaries and categorization, amplifying possibility, and finding new clarity in the in betweens: which is why we were so excited to find and partner with Sala Diaz, who is so graciously extending their space to the OS for OS Fest 2020 on March 5th, our AWP offsite marathon event and celebration this year.
Sala Diaz, established in 1995, describes itself as “an experimental nonprofit venue for the creation and display of contemporary art.” Running on an artist-centric model of operation in the Cultural Arts District of San Antonio — and currently helmed by wonderful director Anjali Gupta — Sala Diaz also houses a residency program (Casa Chuck), and functions as a community organization for a range of activities, events, and collaborators.
It’s critically important to the OS’s mission to engage in and with a place and its residents when exporting our practice elsewhere; learning about, connecting with, and being in dialogue with the community in sites where big conferences like AWP land is an important counter-point to the colonial / settler mode of consuming and performing on top of a locality within the non-spaces of convention centers, airports, and hotels, which is in itself a type of complicit erasure. We hope you’ll take the time to visit Sala Diaz to see local artist Joe Harjo’s incredible work, and to spend time embedding in place.
As a start, an acknowledgement: San Antonio stands on the ancestral and seized lands of the Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, and Comanche Peoples. We pay respects to their elders past and present. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today. And please join us in uncovering such truths at any and all public events.
CURRENTLY ON VIEW: JOE HARJO “THE ONLY CERTAIN WAY”
During our week in San Antonio, and during our event, the current exhibit from artist Joe Harjo, will be on view. Harjo’s collection of works speaks to the forced assimilation of Indigenous Peoples to Christianity, explores the ways in which kindness was weaponized as a tool against Native Americans in order to shift their beliefs.
The Only Certain Way uncovers the lack of visibility of Native American culture, identity and lived experience, due to both the absence of proper representation in mainstream culture and the undermining of Native belief systems by way of mistrust and deceit veiled in sympathy and salvation. The complex and undeniable relationship between Native history and United States history exposes the ways tribal identity has been dismantled, grouped and homogenized to conceal diverse collections of individuals and communities. The works in the exhibition questions the religious belief systems still so intricately woven into past generations — the results of being stripped of spiritual practice and tradition. Forced colonization and assimilation to Christian-based religions led to a century of whitewashing culture and customs and removing access to ancestors and their omnipresent spirits.
Harjo writes, “I am interested in identifying the line between the ideas and religious notions that have been forced upon Natives and the resulting adaptations of non-Native customs. Assimilation creates a crisis of identity and strips bare inherent beliefs, creating a base upon with to build a new system of faith. This disruption of self, brought on by conversion, is then only remedied by the promises of “truth” made by Christianity. The sculptures, photographs, prints and videos in the exhibition visualize the historical divide between acceptance and resistance, speaking to what is forced upon as opposed to what is created as a response.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Joe Harjo is a San Antonio-based artist born in Oklahoma City, OK, and a tribal member of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond. Harjo works as a multidisciplinary artist, choosing his medium based on his concept. His work often uses humor to tackle hard subjects such as Native American identity, representation and culture. Recent exhibitions include: Texas, We’re Listening, Brownsville Museum of Art, Brownsville, TX; We’re Still Here: Native American Artists Then and Now, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio, TX; Reimagining the Third Space, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice, Kansas City, MO; and re/thinking photography: Conceptual Photography from Texas, FotoFest, Houston, TX. He recently curated a series of films created by Native Americans at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio. Harjo is a board member of the Muscogee Arts Association, a nonprofit organization that advocates for living Muscogee artists, a board member of Texas Photographic Society and teaches photography and visual literacy at the Southwest School of Art.
Sala Diaz | 517 Stieren | San Antonio TX | 972.900.0047
Gallery Hours: Thursday — Saturday, 3–7 pm
Joe Harjo, The Only Certain Way, through March 13th.
OS FEST @ Sala Diaz, March 5th, 7–11pm.
