July 30, 2025—Albuquerque, NM—The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (IPCC) is honored to announce two new exhibitions opening on August 9, 2025. These are Sentient Structures: The Art of Skye Tafoya + SABA, in the Artists Circle Gallery, and in the Art Through Struggle Gallery, Indigenous Freeways: Southwest Wildstyle from North to South, a mural installation by the Arrowsoul Art Collective. Both exhibitions share new stories of the centrality of Pueblo architectural designs to Pueblo art. These artists incorporate Pueblo understandings of material, organization, and design into their processes of paper-weaving, printmaking, and painting.
Sentient Structures: The Art of Skye Tafoya + SABA (on view August 9-November 2, 2025) showcases the work of two artists creating architecturally-inspired expressions in materials that respond to the senses. Skye Tafoya (Eastern Band Cherokee/Santa Clara Pueblo) weaves paper structures and embeds knowledge in them through her printmaking processes. SABA (Diné/Pueblo of Jemez) makes paintings and prints that anchor Pueblo architecture as evolving sites of home. This exhibition showcases a spectrum of innovative approaches to printmaking, painting, and book arts and blurs the lines between two and three-dimensional mediums.
For this exhibition’s title, pairing the words “sentient” and “structures” provides a theme that takes a closer look at the innate responsiveness of artworks. The concept of “sentience” refers to the will and liveliness of art materials to respond to the people, variables, and stimuli that interact with them. It recognizes the responsiveness of mediums and artworks as a critical element of their presence as living beings in this shared world.
Speaking about her artistic influences, Tafoya explained, “Although my basketmaking practice isn’t exhibited, it heavily informs my contemporary art practice through imagery, designs, knowledge, and patterns that are revealed in prints, paper weavings, and artist’s books.”
About his artistic grounding, SABA stated, “My artworks reflect a fusion of ‘Southwest Wildstyle’—an improvisational style that’s always changing—from the underground red road along New Mexico’s Indigenous freeways.”
SABA is also a lead artist for the exhibition Indigenous Freeways: Southwest Wildstyle from North to South (August 9, 2025-June 28, 2026), a new mural installation by the Arrowsoul Art Collective. The series of four paintings fuses concepts of the beginning, present, and future of Indigenous pictographic arts. In the Southwest region, pictographs are painted visual forms on ancestral rocks, often as pigment on basalt. These images record particular moments of Indigenous presence, migration, and history in the area.
Ancestral pictographs remain vital sources of present-day and future relationships for Indigenous peoples with past generations. They offer sites of ongoing inspiration for Native artists of the Southwest region to make new connections with earlier forms of artistic expression in the land. Ancestral pictographic imagery continues to evoke new rhythms in its presence today.
The mural focuses on the changes in architectural and artistic materials in the Southwest region and new uses for rocks, clay, and pigments as the conditions of home alter over millennia. The imagery in these panels creates a dialogue with ancestral methods of painting on rock–a spraying technique from the mouth akin to aerosol spray paint or “Arrowsoul." These methods give a layered texture from blending air or breath with pigment. “Arrowsoul” spray paint creates Future Old School, or ancestral to contemporary relationships, as reflections of Indigenous Freeways–a meshing of artistic and cultural exchange through its adaptive qualities.
To the Arrowsoul Art Collective, “The Arrow is used by all Indigenous peoples around the world for hunting and protecting. The Soul is what we are feeding and defending.”
The joint reception for both exhibitions will take place on September 6, 2025, from 4-8pm in the IPCC Courtyard. This is a free, child-friendly event. Visitors can meet artists Skye Tafoya, SABA, and the Arrowsoul Art Collective; hear their talks, and witness them make printed artworks. The featured artists will be making a new artwork that will be added to the Artists Circle Gallery. Visitors can also bring their own shirt or bandana for our artist-run, screen-printing station (paper will be provided), hear music from hip hop DJs, and check out regional breakdancers. Refreshments will be served. For more information, visit indianpueblo.org/events.
About the Artists:
Rhiannon Skye Tafoya is an interdisciplinary artist from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Santa Clara Pueblo tribes. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in print media from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. She employs printmaking, digital design, and basketry techniques in creating her artist’s books, prints, and paper weavings. Both of her tribal heritages, cultures, and lineages are manifested in her two- and three-dimensional artworks that range in size from a few inches to a few feet. She is inspired by her family history of basketry and observing her father and maternal grandmother weave baskets from red willow, honeysuckle vine, and white oak. She creates to preserve, archive, and share personal, familial, and tribal stories. She published her first artist’s book, Ul’nigid’ (Cherokee translation: strong) in 2020 and has exhibited her work nationally and abroad in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Tafoya’s art is housed in many special collections, including the United States Library of Congress, Kohler Art Library, the Bainbridge Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Museum of the Cherokee People. She currently lives in Cherokee, North Carolina.
SABA is from the Diné (Navajo) and Walatowa (Pueblo of Jemez) tribes. He is a painter and printmaker of architectural and letter-based art in the “Pueblo Funk” style—his name for a remix of old and new expressions. From building forts out of sagebrush, hauling water, and attending boarding school in the 1980s, SABA comes from a world that bridges ancestral understandings from the Chaco Canyon area with the urban flow of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In collaboration with his partner Shawna and their children, he creates local arts events focused on reuniting communities up and down the Rio Grande. These include two annual projects in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he lives—the Pictograff exhibition, mural, and community arts day at the Branigan Cultural Center and the Illegal? art show of mural and graffiti-inspired paintings on exterior building walls. Active in Albuquerque, SABA breaks down borders and beautifies public spaces through the Arrowsoul Art Collective and its associated Indigenous art shop and creative convenings. At the heart of SABA’s work, he connects young people to local professional mentors currently practicing trades and life skills as artists. Adding to the momentum of Indigenous freeways, or cultural exchange, in the Southwest region and beyond, SABA brings communities together through arts-based gatherings and healing dialogue platforms.
Arrowsoul Art Collective, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, invites artistic expression and cultural exchange in community gatherings throughout the region. With “Arrowsoul,” or aerosol spray paint, as a primary medium, the Collective nurtures deep connections with the ancestral pictographic arts of Indigenous peoples in the Southwest and beyond. This group of artists grounds their creative practices in artwork across all mediums. Their convenings include hip hop, breakdancing, public art, and everything in between. A basis of mentorship for the next generations fuels their work as role models for their communities. Time and time again, Arrowsoul Art Collective enacts and demonstrates the healing power of artistic creation. They build new relationships across cultures to empower strength, kindness, and care within communities–all with an edge of funk, surprise, and trailblazing.
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About the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center:
Founded in 1976 by the 19 Pueblo tribes of New Mexico, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is a world-class museum and cultural center located in the historic 19 Pueblos District. The mission of the IPCC Campus is to serve as a gathering place where Pueblo culture is celebrated through creative and cultural experiences while providing economic opportunities
to Pueblo and local communities. Visitors can learn fascinating history, shop for Native jewelry and art, watch a cultural dance, hear Native languages and experience the flavors of traditional and contemporary Native cuisine. To learn more, please visit: www.indianpueblo.org and www.facebook.com/IndianPueblo.