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A group of people of various ages are gathered in a library, some seated and some standing, with one woman waving and bookshelves visible in the background.

El Palacio Plática: Myth making, cutting fences, radioactive chupacabras, and drag queens

FREE event FUSION | 708, 708 1st St. NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 Join editor of El Palacio, Emily Withnall, and summer issue contributors Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Myrriah Gόmez, Lazarus Letcher, and Oliver Horn, as they discuss New Mexico history—from Indigenous enslavement to Black and queer experiences on Route 66 to the loss of communal land grant land to the state’s nuclear legacy—and the nature of the archive.

By Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Lazarus Letcher, Myrriah Gómez, and Oliver Horn

Bright sunlight shines through tree branches against a clear blue sky, with visible lens flare and sun rays spreading outward.

Sun Series

Sunrise, accept this offering. Sunrise.  –From Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko Part I: Sunsetting The end is full of waiting.  Of willful meandering.  The kind that compels you to put candles of too many varieties into your cart, despite your fear of fire.

By Santana Shorty

Contemporary art gallery with wooden floors, sculptural glass pieces on white plinths, a large abstract painting on the wall, and exposed wooden ceiling beams.

Pathways Through Opacity and Apocalypse

To arrive at SITE SANTA FE’s 12th International: Once Within a Time installations at the Palace of the Governors, a visitor must first proceed through a series of doorways. Following an uncanny eyeline best suited for a dream sequence in a Hitchcock thriller, the eerie recursion within this ancient structure creates the sensation of re-entering the same room again and again.

By Brad Trone  and Rica Maestas

Two people walk beside a donkey on a dirt road near a wooden fence and rocky landscape under a cloudy sky.

Connecting Time, Place, and People

On a warm August morning about 150 years ago, the people who lived on the sandstone promontory above Di’ Chuuna would have looked east at the slumbering lines of Kaweshtima.  Even with the summer harvest underway, they might have wondered when snow would start draping the mountain.

By Laura Paskus

A black and white aerial view of a construction site with circular structures, scattered materials, vehicles, and uneven terrain.

Roads of the Dead

I’m going to Spaceport America. To access the spaceport, I’ll have to cross the Jornada del Muerto, a desert basin cut by a hundred-mile road. I calculate and the Jornada del Muerto is longer than the distance between the edge of space and my body on land.

By Daisy Atterbury

A grayscale aerial view of a barren landscape with scattered craters of various sizes, distant mountains, and cloudy sky overhead.

The Shapes of Space

Space is a shapeshifting throughline in Daisy Atterbury’s book The Kármán Line. There’s space as in I need some—a lover pulling away. There’s space misread as emptiness, as in the vast expanses of deserts and oceans, open space where governments detonate practice bombs.

By Chelsey Johnson

Two men stand at a wooden table outdoors, speaking to a uniformed officer; trees and sky are visible in the background.

Cathay Williams

"Can the class touch your hair?” I was sitting in my high school sophomore year of U.S. History when I first heard of the Buffalo Soldiers. It was a rare moment in my Indiana education when we touched on African American history that took us beyond or outside of victimhood.

By Lazarus Letcher

An older woman sits outdoors on red soil, weaving a large basket from natural fibers, with dry grass, a tree, and a vehicle in the background.

Community of Craft

By Gina Rae La Cerva One of Cynthia Burke’s many creative endeavors is hosting a radio show for her town of two hundred people in the Australian outback. Called “CB” by her friends, she loves playing country and gospel music ranging from the 1950s to 2000s.

By Gina Rae La Cerva

Exhibit entrance designed as a black-and-white illustrated archway with green information panels; artwork and objects displayed inside and on surrounding walls.

Undoing Dominant Narratives

What does it mean to build a museum? For video maker and interdisciplinary artist Chris E. Vargas, building a museum means critiquing the institution itself, where the museum as an artifact interrogates the power of its presence, questions its authority, and reveals its limitations.

By Jake Skeets