TOP PICKS for the week
Santa Fe Zine Fest returns for its second year with a showcase of New Mexico’s DIY publishing talents. More than two dozen zinesters will fill up the Center for Contemporary Art’s Tank Garage to show off their stories, comics, art, photography and more. Attendees can buy from the exhibitors, such as Santa Fe’s Strangers Collective and East of West gallery owner L.E. Brown, or make trades using their own zines. The Saturday event at CCA, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, runs from noon to 5 p.m. and it’s free. In conjunction with Zine Fest, East of West Gallery at 2351 Fox Road, No. 600, will be hosting an exhibit, “Mother Tongue,” starting tonight and running through April 29. The show features zinemakers of Muslim and Middle Eastern descent and will include an installation of 3-D printed words in Ottoman Turkish, an ancestral language of the region.
WHO ARE YOU? SITE Santa Fe’s Young Curators are exploring identity as well as the way adults often box young people into certain categories in their latest show, “Guises.” The Young Curators are a group of high school students who are learning about the inner workings of creating a gallery show from SITE. The show of about 20 students’ photography and artwork dives into the idea of inner-self and all the themes that go along with that, including “self-alteration, self-acceptance and how external factors impact identity.”
“Guises” will be at SITE, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, until May 16. A free open-mic night in conjunction with the show will be April 25 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
THE ART OF EXPLORATION: A two-day art and science extravaganza starts today with discussions and performances about celebrating connections between the two different fields. The “I Love Life” symposium, organized by local organization BioCultura and held at the New Mexico History Museum and The Santa Fe Art Institute, includes several keynote speakers and performers exploring “biodiversity and genetics through the lens of art and science.”
The guests include UCLA Department of Design Media Arts professor Victoria Vesna, John Talasek of the National Academy of Sciences, LANL research technologist Miguél Torrez and Richard Sayre, senior research scientist at the New Mexico Consortium, which includes the state’s three research universities and the Los Alamos lab. Performers include Navajo flute player Andrew Thomas and Los Alamos-based musician Patrick Neher.
Today’s and Saturday’s events run from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with keynotes and roundtable discussions at the museum, 113 Lincoln Ave. One of today’s presentations from LANL’s Torrez touches on his work with the New Mexico DNA Project, examining the complicated genetic makeup of native New Mexicans, and events wrap up with a LASER talk at the Santa Fe Art Institute, 1600 St. Michael’s Drive, featuring Ana MacArthur, a Santa Fe-based scientist who studies light and its relationship to living things. MacArthur’s talk is from 6:30 to 8 p.m. For a full schedule, Google I Love Life Symposium.
After the official events, there will be a tour Sunday of the New Mexico Consortium lab and the Bradbury Science Museum, both in Los Alamos. One-day tickets are $15 and two-day passes are $25. Events are free for UNM students. Purchase tickets at flipcause.com.