Confluencia: Contemporary Nuevomexicano Art
Saturday, October 17, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Located in Gallery Hózhó at Hotel Chaco
Gallery Hózhó is pleased to present Confluencia: Contemporary Nuevomexicano Art, a group exhibition curated by renowned Santero carver Vicente Telles. Featuring new ceramics, photography, beadwork, painting, and more by Charles Carrillo, Debbie Carrillo, Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jacob Gutierrez, Arla Lucia, Diego Rigales, Eric Romero, and MORE. The exhibition will be on view from October 17 through December 4, 2026.
During New Mexico's campaign for statehood and its emergence as a tourist destination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political and cultural leaders promoted an image of the region as “tri-cultural,” a place where distinct cultures supposedly existed alongside one another in harmony. Since then, this idea has been challenged as an oversimplification of New Mexico's complex histories, which include colonization, migration, and conflict among the many communities that have shaped the state. Confluencia: Contemporary Nuevomexicano Art explores the connections and interchange as seen in the arts. Meaning convergence or coming together, the title reflects the intersections and exchanges that shape the state and its contemporary art. Throughout his career, Telles has explored connections among New Mexico's diverse artistic and cultural traditions, and for this show he invited artists whose work draws on different histories, places, and cultural traditions to show how these experiences overlap, influence one another, and continue to evolve. As Vicente Telles presents it, Confluencia brings together artists whose work reflects the many ways history, culture, and place continue to inform contemporary artistic practice. Rather than presenting New Mexico as a collection of separate traditions, the exhibition considers the connections, overlaps, and exchanges that shape its artistic life.
Charles Carrillo is a New Mexican santero who carves and paints sacred figures, revitalizing the Spanish colonial traditions of 18th-century New Mexico. His hand-carved bultos and retablos, made with natural pigments and piñon sap varnish on cottonwood root and ponderosa pine, draw from the religious heritage of Hispanic New Mexican communities.
Debbie Carrillo, a well-known New Mexican micaceous potter, explores the colonial history of the Pueblo de Abiquiú through traditional pottery practices. Her hand-coiled, utilitarian micaceous vessels draw from pottery traditions made by Genízaro villagers in the 18th and 19th centuries, connecting historical craftsmanship with contemporary cultural storytelling.
Marcus Xavier Chormicle is a photographer whose work focuses on grief and generational cycles of systemic violence and the history of the Southwestern territories of the United States through making collages, land-based installations, artist books, and performance work that centers around his photographic works.
Arla Lucia (an enrolled citizen of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma), a self-taught artist, uses beadwork to explore the intersection of adornment, nature, and the celestial. Raised in Colorado away from her ancestral lands, Lucia studied the techniques and designs of the beaded floral forms, researching historic beadwork examples in museum storage and photos, reverse-engineering the process for making the raised designs.
Diego Rigales is a contemporary artist whose work examines the tension and reciprocity between creation and destruction, trust and skepticism, humanity and artificial intelligence. Working primarily in painting and sculpture, Rigales treats analog media as both a recording device and a form of resistance, insisting on material presence in an era of accelerating digital fabrication.
Eric Romero combines bold color and evocative metaphor to create compelling works that explore the intersections of myth, philosophy, and culture.