Women To Watch

This 8th Women To Watch exhibition, on view from April to August 2027, is a dynamic exploration of contemporary artists’ books: works of art in book form. Artists’ books can appear in a wide variety of formats and materials, encompassing innovative uses of paper and print, sculptural works, and much more. This exhibition encourages audiences to rethink the nature of book arts by challenging assumptions about the medium, and featuring works that combine approaches and techniques. Women to Watch 2027: A Book Arts Revolution coincides with the museum’s 40th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the Women to Watch series, which supports the careers of women and nonbinary artists across regional and international art scenes.

New Mexico State Committee will be promoting and celebrating this exhibition through special events TBA in 2027.

In the 7th Women To Watch exhibition, visionary artists reimagined the past, presented alternate realities, and inspired audiences to create different futures. These artists reflected how our world has been transformed by a global pandemic, advocacy for social reform, and political division — and then showed how these extraordinary times have inspired them. Works by the 28 artists featured in Women to Watch 2024: New Worlds explored these ideas from perspectives shifting across geographies, cultural viewpoints, and time.

New Mexico exhibition artist: Eliza Naranjo Morse

https://www.elizanaranjomorse.com/

Featured artists in Paper Routes, the 6th Women To Watch exhibition, responded to the many uses and cultural associations of paper—from protest signs to packaging, lottery tickets, and wallpaper—approaching the medium in varied ways. Some highlighted the delicate properties of paper through meticulous cuts, resulting in elaborate forms, patterns, and designs. Others compacted and consolidated the material, forming surprisingly dense and monumental sculptures. Artists relied on traditional as well as innovative techniques. Women To Watch 2020: Paper Routes highlighted and celebrated this diversity of approaches and the transformation of this ubiquitous and eclectic material into complex works of art.

New Mexico exhibition artist: Mira Burack

https://matterology.com/page/1-ABOUT.html

Featured artists in the 5th Women To Watch exhibition, Heavy Metal, investigated the physical properties and expressive possibilities of metalwork through a wide variety of objects, including sculpture, jewelry, and conceptual forms. Works in the exhibition ranged from large-scale installations to small objects intended for personal adornment; these disparate works were fashioned out of iron, steel, bronze, silver, gold, brass, tin, aluminum, copper, and pewter. Women To Watch 2020: Heavy Metal sought to disrupt the predominantly masculine narrative that surrounds metalworking, and demonstrate that contemporary women artists carry on a vibrant legacy in the field.

New Mexico exhibition artist: Paula Castillo

https://www.paulacastilloart.com/

The connection between women and nature has a long history, one that is fraught with gendered stereotypes and discriminatory assumptions. The contemporary artists highlighted in the 4th Women To Watch exhibition, Organic Matters, built upon and expanded these pre-existing conceptualizations by actively investigating the natural world, to fanciful and sometimes frightful effect. Collectively, their work addressed modern society’s complex relationship with the environment, ranging from concern for its future to fear of its power. Through a diverse array of mediums, including photography, drawing, sculpture, and video, these artists depicted fragile ecosystems, otherworldly landscapes, and creatures both real and imagined.

New Mexico exhibition artist: Mary Tsiongas

Since conceptual and feminist artists brought fiber art into the Western mainstream in the 1960s and ’70s, textiles have become central to contemporary artistic practice worldwide. Prior to the ’60s, critics classified fiber art as a cousin to craft. However, contemporary artists create what modernist critics thought unlikely: meaningful, visually compelling, and emotionally charged works of fiber art. Artists featured in the 3rd Women To Watch exhibition, High Fiber, have stitched, woven, knit, crocheted, and wound fibers or fiber-like materials into textiles, sculptures, and installations. Their expressive forms centered on the themes of nature, history, and the consuming power of making.

New Mexico exhibition artist: Ligia Bouton

https://www.ligiaboutonstudio.com/

Through the nineteenth century, Western artists were taught that the human figure was the noblest subject they could pursue. Historical figure painters most often rendered ideally proportioned bodies and drew their narrative themes from history or sacred texts. The artists in the 2nd Women To Watch exhibition, Body of Work, rejected the old-fashioned strictures that previously defined figure painting. Whether adapting images from past art, working with models in their studios, or rendering wholly imaginary scenes, these artists used the figure to express their unique vision of the human experience in the post-modern world. They embraced figure painting as a highly subjective means of expression, creating works of art that are alternately humorous, inspiring, and provocative.

*New Mexico did not participate in the 2010 Women to Watch

In this inaugural Women To Watch exhibition, bringing together a diverse selection of color and black-and-white photography was designed to increase the visibility of—and critical response to—a promising cadre of emerging and mid-career women artists. By seeking out photographers deserving of national and international attention, NMWA’s committees participated in the museum’s core mission as well as strengthened ties with respected art professionals in their respective regions.

New Mexico exhibition artist: Joan Myers

https://www.joanmyers.com/