La Eterna Injusticia
La Eterna Injusticia
Martín Wannam
January 6 – January 27, 2023
Reception: Friday, January 6, 5-8:30 pm
Sanitary Tortilla Factory proudly presents La Eterna Injusticia by Martín Wannam. This exhibition reflects on the power of monuments by questioning the ideologies they can reinforce. The brown silhouettes in each portrait takes the place of the monuments in Guatemala City with violent, oppressive histories, especially in relation to the LGBTQ+ community. Removing the iconography and placing the brown silhouette in its place creates an intervention that asks the viewer to reimagine each monument’s power through a queer lens. By combining a variety of popular culture references and textures in each artwork, a maximalist anti-aesthetic is created. The concept of monumentality is also present in the video installation. Each performer becomes a moving monument and the audience becomes a participant in the work as they partake in the spectacle. The exhibition asks, what would a queer utopia look like? What, or who would be idolized through a monument?
Artist Bio
Martín Wannam (b. 1992, Guatemala) is a visual artist and educator whose work looks critically at the historical, social, and political climate of Central America, specifically examining its impact on the queer individual. He focuses on the intersection of brownness and queer utopia,using the tools of photography, sculpture, and performance. Working from the premise of iconoclasm, he enacts a constant evaluation of systematic structures such as religion, coloniality, folklore, and white supremacy.
He received his MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico in the Spring 2020, a Diploma in Contemporary photography from La Fototeca (GT) in 2016, and a BA in Graphic Design from the Universidad Rafael Landivar (GT) in 2015. Wannam has exhibited nationally and internationally, including various group and solo shows in Guatemala, The United States, Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Korea. Wannam is the recipient of a Special Mention in the category Series in PHOTO PRIDE 2020, Fulcrum Fund 516 (2020), Coke Newhall Photo Fellowship (2020), MaryAnn Evans Grant (2019), SPE Student Award for Innovations in Imaging (2018), and Site Scholar (2018-2019). Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in Studio Art at UNC Chapel Hill and part of the Fronteristxs Collective.
Happy Time/Doomsday Time
Happy Time/Doomsday Time
Meggan Gould
November 4 – 25, 2022
Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 5-8 pm
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is proud to present Happy Time/Doomsday Time by Meggan Gould. In the scope of the history of photography, the anthotype (flower print) figures as little more than a footnote, with a metaphorical pat on the head (endearing, though unlikely to mature!). Plant materials form the emulsions for this crude printing method: berries, petals, and leaves are crushed or pulverized to stain paper. Exposed though objects or printed material in a contact printing frame, sunlight slowly bleaches an image into existence on the dyed substrate.
As a process, this plant-based printing is both impossible to standardize for commercial distribution and unfixable—not one, but two death knells for an industrialized photographic practice. And a third: tedious exposure times make it impractical for most of the medium’s needs, as they have come to be understood.
As they have come to be understood. Our relationship to photography itself, to both the instantaneity of capture and any presumption of permanence, may need to change as we hover on the precipice of environmental catastrophe. Could the humble anthotype represent our future (gentle, fugitive) experience of photography? Can fading bring joy?
My current obsession focuses on a clock, mostly stuck at 10:10 – as in all watch/clock advertisement. This form of the hands allows the brand name to be framed, with the optimism of a subtle smile form (affectionately known as “Happy Time”). I am fascinated by the tropes of the photographic medium and the assumptions we make in its practice, the ways our vision is quietly mediated. My quest to push against default printing processes figures into the same conversation, for me, as that of this insidious clock time. The occasional Doomsday Clock image joins the mix, stuck ominously at 100 seconds to midnight.
Artist Bio
Meggan Gould is a photographer living and working in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied anthropology, the SALT Institute for Documentary Studies, where she studied non-fiction writing, and Speos (Paris Photographic Institute), where she finally began her studies in photography. She received an MFA in photography from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth. Her photographs have been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.
A Companion for Departure
A Companion for Departure
Billy Joe Miller and Bethany Springer
October 8 – 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 8, 5-8 pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, October 29, 5-8 pm featuring Poet Lauren Camp
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to announce a new visual arts exhibition entitled A Companion for Departure by Billy Joe Miller and Bethany Springer. A Companion for Departure will be on display October 8th – October 29th with viewing hours Thursdays and Fridays, 12 pm-5 pm. Opening and closing receptions celebrating Springer and Miller’s A Companion for Departure will take place Saturday, October 8th from 5 – 8 pm and Saturday, October 29th from 5 – 8 pm. Poet Lauren Camp will contribute to the closing reception of a public reading of work that is produced from a collaborative exchange of ideas positing A Companion for Departure. This reception is free and open to the public.
In this collective moment of vulnerability, Springer and Miller lose themselves to embark on a shared journey that bridges the familiar and unfamiliar, seeking points of contact between the enigmatic terrain of the body, mortality, and a projected home in outer space.
In a series of conversations spanning over a year, the artists shared experiences that ultimately and profoundly shaped the creation of work. These call-and-response discussions mined the limitations and possibilities of the body, thresholds of loss and resurrection, increasing competition for natural resources held by a planet in crisis, and wonder for the mysteries of the universe as they unfold. Music perpetually materialized as a point of departure and arrival – as a result, song lyrics are woven through the exhibition. Deciphering what was found, the created works coexist as coordinates in a synthesized map, as companions in a metamorphosis processing historical space, memorials, time capsules and artifacts in their wake.
Artist Bios
Bethany Springer received an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Georgia and holds a Modern Dance minor from Virginia Tech. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Individual Fellowships from the Arkansas and Iowa Arts Councils, and a Community Research Award from the UA Community and Family Institute. She has been in residence at Full Tilt Creative Centre and Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland, The Arctic Circle in Svalbard, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Tides Institute & Museum of Art, and Marble House Project among others. Exhibition venues include 21C Museum Hotel, Maryland Art Place, Boston Center for the Arts, the Delaware Contemporary, LHUCA, and most recently as a contributor to the Personal Structures exhibition at the 2022 Venice Art Biennale. Springer currently lives and works in Fayetteville, Arkansas and is an Associate Professor in Sculpture + Experimental Media at the University of Arkansas.
Billy Joe Miller is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist who creates sculptures, installations, and public art in response to the natural world. The themes of belonging, shelter, and sanctuary are integral to his work. As a hospice nursing assistant for many years, Miller accompanied people through the process of dying. His experiences in healthcare-related sites, as well as his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2010, have inspired his desire to create accessible public art for parks, community centers, medical clinics, and hospitals. Originally from San Diego, California, Miller now lives in the East Mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to his studio practice, Miller creates collaborative community-based projects and produces public art. His work has been supported by New Mexico Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Meow Wolf, Bridge Projects, The Speranza Foundation, City of Palm Desert, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
ABQ Zine Fest 11
ABQ Zine Fest 11
SANITARY TORTILLA FACTORY
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1ST
11am – 5pm
ABQ Zine Fest is back in full force this year with exhibitors on site! We are excited to be partnering with Sanitary Tortilla Factory in downtown Albuquerque to host the fest.
Be on the lookout for pre-zine fest events, workshops, food vendors, and other announcements!
Accessibility Requests and Considerations:
+Sanitary Tortilla Factory space and restrooms are wheelchair accessible and meet ADA requirements.
+Please refrain from wearing strong scents.
+N95 masks or equivalent are required.
+We ask that everyone exhibiting and attending be vaccinated and take a rapid test the day of the event, but we do not have the capacity to enforce this upon entry.
Wires Under Tension by Dylan McLaughlin
Wires Under Tension
September 2 – September 30, 2022
Reception: Friday, September 2, 5-8pm
Through sculptural sound installation and experimental music composition, Dylan McLaughlin’s new exhibition Wires Under Tension provides sonified meditations on stories of eco-violence and climate threatened place. The exhibition gives space to hear and feel warning signs of drought and die-off, as well as experience material investigations of disruptive communication technologies and sonic eco-violence. One work manipulates recorded sounds of bark beetle infested trees illuminating conversations about the effects of climate change on the Piñon Pine. Another makes audible the resilient calls of the endangered Piñon Jay, experiencing habitat loss. In this work, violence and beauty are not presented starkly. The sound of Bark beetles move from harsh hum to delicate sparse space, while fracking field recordings become an oppressive meditation. Wires Under Tension brings into conversation the magnitude and influence of the acoustic world, in its vulnerability, influence, resistance, adaptation, and transformation.
Bio:
Dylan McLaughlin (b. Navajo Nation) is a sound and video artist living and working in New Mexico. Looking critically to ecologies of extraction, his work weaves Diné mythology, open source ecological data, and environmental histories while holding space for complexity. What transpires is the sonification of relationships to land through experimental music composition, improvised performance, and meditations of new forms of cartography and viewing land. In his multi-media installation and performative works, McLaughlin looks to engage the poetics and politics of human relations to place. McLaughlin is a recipient of the Fulcrum Fund, and has done residencies at Mass MoCA, Slow Research Lab, and BOXO projects. He received his BFA in New Media Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and completed his Master of Fine Arts in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico in 2021.