Joanna Keane Lopez was in Taos in August for four weeks as a part of the 2022 Paseo Project Artist in Residence program. Utilizing her large-scale sculptural work with adobe, Lopez partook in a series of events and performances offered free to the Taos community. 

The residency pivoted around a large-scale installation made of adobe constructed within the Historic District of Taos on the grounds of the Taos Center for the Arts, titled, “juguetes de zoquetes,” (mud toys). Manifested through community engagement workshops, Lopez’s work built upon contemporary installation and public art practices utilizing techniques of traditional adobe architecture. The final installation was activated, with an exploration of collaborative experimental performance including song, voice, percussion, costume and movement.

During her time in Taos, the community had opportunities to learn more about adobe as a contemporary art medium through workshops for youth and adults organized to create the main installation. A roundtable discussion about the work was held at the Encore Gallery, Taos Community Foundation, with a final performance at the installation as the culmination of her time in Taos.

About the artist: Joanna Keane Lopez (b. 1991 Albuquerque; lives in New Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work reclaims relationships to craft architecture of land as a form of medicine, a blessing and a spell. Her work with large scale installation, vernacular architecture and sculpture is informed through the use of the materials of adobe, alíz, clay, dyes and paper and often collaborative performance. Through the passing down of knowledge of vernacular architectural techniques of the greater Southwest, Keane Lopez creates work that seeks healing and questions land use and memory that is connected to her own multi-generational roots in New Mexico. Keane Lopez has exhibited nationally at institutions which include: The Momentary of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, SITE Santa Fe, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum, Sarasota Art Museum and has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.