The First International Contemporary Art Biennial in the United States

Ann Hamilton’s installation, salic draws on rail travel’s significant role in the Southwest United States, exploring intersections between displacement and arrival, history and memory, time and place. The zoeotropic effect of flickering black-and-white images projected on blacked-out passenger car windows speaks to the interaction between an imprecise past and a solid present, which can nonetheless seem to dissolve before one's eyes. 

Barbara Bloom's Pictures from the Floating World implicated visitors in the voyeur's gaze of a culture from an outside. Within a cavernous room, a bridge arched over a red "sea” filled with stern, uniform faces, prompting visitors to consider the distortion of the "other" within the framework of international tourism, and reconsider their point of view within the space physically as well as culturally.

As the exhibition opened just two days before the 50th anniversary of the explosion of the first atomic bomb, New Mexico artist Meridel Rubenstein used the moment for a close observance and metaphorical look at the cultural legacy left by a particularly controversial figure in the landscape: Robert Oppenheimer. Rubenstein’s complex installation drew on her previous work about Los Alamos and its scientists, and presented both romance and tension between forces of nature and science. 

Valeska Soares' installation, Sinners included seven prayer benches arranged beneath a skylight, with hairy imprints of knees pressed into each bench. Motion detectors relayed visitor movements through the space to a hidden computer, translating them into heartbeat sounds played on hidden speakers. Diaphanous veils subtly respond to the sound, evoking contemplation and meditation.