Opening Celebration

Ecstatic Land  &

Kenneth Tam: Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory

November 12, 4-7 pm

Join us for the Opening Celebration of Ecstatic Land and Kenneth Tam: Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory on Saturday, November 12 from 4–7pm.

The special evening will include film screenings, Nancy Holt’s Starfire, and performances starting at 6pm by Christie Blizard and Laura Ortman. There will be music and drinks. Free and open to all!

Thank you to our sponsors, Marfa Wine Co.

October 26, 2022 –May 2023

Ballroom Courtyard

Sundown until 10pm

Join us from sundown until 10pm for the Ecstatic Land film series in the Ballroom Courtyard and the Marfa Public Library. 

October 26– 29: 

Alan Michelson, Wolf Nation, 2018. 9:59 minutes. 

November 2– 5: 

Genesis Báez, Nubes (Clouds), 2019. 6:45 minutes.

November 9–12: 

Christie Blizard, Plant Songs, 2021-2022. 16 minutes. 

Sondra Perry, I Make Land Art Now, 2015. 2:41 minutes

Christie Blizard, Cactus, 2020, 4:47 minutes. 

March 16, 2023 at Marfa Public Library: 

Isuma, One Day in the Life of Noah Pittuagatuk, 2019. Directed by Zacharias Kunuk. 113 minutes. 

Kenneth Tam’s solo exhibition Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory features a series of commissioned sculptures alongside a two-channel video installation. In his exhibition, Tam unearths forgotten histories in order to reimagine our own identities and to question dominant myths that shape and govern our bodies. One of the most enduring myths that still haunts our nation is Manifest Destiny and the conquest of the American West. These ideologies have circulated and remain embedded in popular culture through Westerns and advertising, such as the figure of the Marlboro Man. These images reified claims to Indigenous land as well as distorted Indigenous histories, while also enforcing stereotypes of Anglo-American masculinity that remain pervasive. 

Tam’s examination of American westward expansion is rooted in the unrecorded lives of nameless Chinese laborers, who toiled under the most physically arduous conditions in the late nineteenth century. Silent Spikes, the video installation on view at Ballroom, weaves together improvised dialogue and movement sequences from a group of participants, along with semi-fictional scenes of a Chinese worker from inside the tunnels of the Transcontinental Railroad. During Tam’s site visit to West Texas in 2021, his encounter with artifacts and fragments of objects left at workers’ camps along the railroad led him to consider how physical remnants function as stand-ins for the disappeared histories of laborers. Tam’s sculptures suggest other ways of thinking about these men. His use of archaeological fragments as visual and material language complicates the simple narratives that have been constructed about migrant lives. In their lifetimes, Chinese laborers were reviled for their race but praised for their industriousness, their worth as people always tied to their ability to labor. Bits of dried food, broken jewelry and other personal items are integrated into the sculptures to point to experiences of precarity, but also tenderness and care. Physical traces–and even the sounds of the railroad passing through Marfa still today–can serve as reminders of how this nation was built, and by whom. 

Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory is organized by Daisy Nam, Ballroom Marfa Executive Director and Curator with assistance from Alexann Susholtz, Exhibitions and Curatorial Assistant.

Ecstatic Land is an exhibition and screening series that brings together a multigenerational group of artists whose works explore the intersecting vitalities of the land and self. The word ecstatic comes from the Greek ἔκστασις [ekstasis], meaning “to stand outside oneself.” In nature, and particularly in the vast expanses of the desert, one can experience physical contact with the earth while being emotionally and psychologically transported elsewhere. This affect, present in the artworks in Ecstatic Land, connects material and exterior sites with interior, emotional, psychic states. Land is celebrated as a living force, and the exhibiting artists’ photographs, paintings, films, videos, sculptures, and sounds harmonize the pleasures of seeing what’s around us with those of inward reflection. 

Western art-historical traditions of the landscape genre largely focus on the framing of particular views of nature, often as demonstrations of power and control. And while the artists in Ecstatic Land each reference the natural world, they are not creating landscapes per se. Rather than reproducing or framing views, their works reveal new subjectivities and methods for perceiving shared environments. These artworks transport us beyond sight, reconnecting us to the world through embodied experiences. Challenging and expanding single-point perspectives, these artists offer personal views that would otherwise be invisible, intangible or overlooked. Their approaches run counter to the privatization, misuse, and over-consumption of common spaces and resources. Ecstatic Land proposes ways to live dynamically, critically, queerly, and consciously on and with the land.

Ecstatic Land is co-organized by Guest Curator Dean Daderko and Ballroom Marfa Director and Curator Daisy Nam, with assistance from Alexann Susholtz, Ballroom Marfa Curatorial and Exhibitions Assistant.

On Sunday, October 9, 2022 from X to X, Ballroom Marfa invites the public to join us and the Land Arts program for coffee and conversation with Dr. C.J. Alvarez. In this special expanded classroom session at Ballroom Marfa, Dr. Alvarez will guide students and public participants in thoughtful discourse in response to The Blessings of the Mystery by Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas. Participants will have the opportunity to walk through the exhibition with Dr. Alvarez, Daisy Nam, Ballroom Marfa Executive Director and Curator, and Chris Taylor, Land Arts Director. Following the walkthrough, a conversation will take place with Dr. Alvarez, Chris Taylor, and the Land Arts students who will expand upon the environmental and art historical themes of the exhibition. This program will be the final day of The Blessings of the Mystery at Ballroom Marfa; we hope you’ll join us. 

Dr. C.J. Alvarez is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies. Dr. Alvarez is an environmental historian who writes about deserts, the built environment, and the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech University is a transdisciplinary field program dedicated to expanding awareness of the intersection of human construction and the evolving nature of our planet. The program leverages immersive field experience in the desert southwest as a primary pedagogic agent to support research that opens horizons of perception, probes depths of inquiry and advances understanding of human actions shaping environments. Land Arts attracts architects, artists, and writers from across the university and beyond to a “semester abroad in our own backyard” that travels 6,000 miles overland while camping for two months to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, The Lightning Field—while also visiting sites to expand understanding of what land art might be, such as pre-contact archeology, military-industrial infrastructure, and sites of contemporary wilderness and waste. Throughout the travels, and on-campus, participants make work in response to their experience, which is exhibited at the Museum of Texas Tech University to conclude the field season.

Chris Taylor is the director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech University and an Associate Professor of Architecture. He studied architecture at the University of Florida and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard and has been with the College of Architecture since 2008.

Ballroom Marfa hosts a cocktail reception for Ballroom members.  Join us as we celebrate the exhibition The Blessings of the Mystery and unveil the limited-edition silkscreen print Somi S’ek, The Land of the Sun, La Tierra del Sol. Created by the artists Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas in collaboration with Ballroom and printed by Du-Good Press, the proceeds of the edition supports our exhibitions and programs.

The limited edition print is a multilayered silkscreen that embodies Somi Se’k. It is not only what the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe refers to as the lands on both sides of the River of Spirits (Rio Grande), it is also a universe where the region’s present, past, and future are still in conversation.

There will be cocktails and a private tour of The Blessings of the Mystery, led by Ballroom Marfa’s Executive Director and Curator Daisy Nam.

The event will take place during Chinati Weekend, immediately before the Community Dinner at the Chinati Arena. 

Not a member? Join or renew here.

You’re invited October 7-9, 2022 as we celebrate the closing of The Blessings of the Mystery by Carolina Caycedo and David De Rozas during the 35th Annual Chinati Weekend. The exhibition emerges from Caycedo and de Rozas’s multidisciplinary practices, which are centered around environmental justice, encounters between history and memory, and Indigenous rights and cosmologies.

Ballroom Marfa will be open for extended gallery hours and special programming including a Community Block Party with Marfa Public Radio & Marfa Studio of Arts.

We hope you’ll join us!

Ballroom Marfa invites you to join us for a free premiere of MXTX: A Cross-Border Exchange on Sunday, September 4 at the Marfa Visitor Center. 

MXTX is a live performance, album and open-source audio sample library crossing physical and social boundaries through collaborative exchange. The project involves more than 40 DJ-producers and composers from both sides of the Rio Grande. A collective of the contributing musicians will travel to Marfa to take the stage for the West Texas Premiere of the project as part of the 35th annual Marfa Lights Festival.

The multifaceted and dynamic project is a collaboration of numerous Texas and Mexico-based artists including:

• Golden Hornet, an Austin-based non-profit led by Graham Reynolds
• Orión García, founder of the Latinx DJ/producer/artist collective, Peligrosa
• Coka Treviño, art entrepreneur from Monterrey, Mexico and founder of The Projecto
• Felipe Pérez Santiago, highly-acclaimed Mexico City composer, sound artist and current artist in residence at California’s SETI Institute
• Ramón Amezcua “Bostich” of the groundbreaking Nortec Collective, based in Tijuana
• Rubén Albarrán, renowned vocalist and activist from Mexico City, lead singer of the legendary Cafe Tacvba
• Gabriela Ortiz, Latin Grammy nominated composer and recipient of Mexico’s National Prize for Arts & Literature

MXTX began with the creation of a sample library commissioned from twenty composers and twenty DJ-producers based in Mexico and Texas. These forty artists created a palette of sound designed to represent each of their perspectives. The DJ-producers provided beats, drops, and more, while the composers created melodic, rhythmic, and chordal fragments to be recorded as segments and loops. All of these sounds formed the initial foundation of the MXTX library. A core group of six composers and six DJ-producers, commissioned with balanced geographical representation, used this library to create twelve songs. Created for a mixed chamber ensemble and a DJ, the twelve works will be presented live, with premieres in Marfa, Mexico City, and Austin.

The MXTX: A Cross-Border Exchange album was released through Six Degrees Records in 2022 and consists of thirteen songs that demonstrate the immense beauty and power of music to overcome divides. Presented as part of the Marfa Lights Festival, the show at the Marfa Visitor Center will be the second live performance of MXTX. Attendance is free and open to the public. 

Saturday, August 6, 2022
7-11 PM
Bridgehampton, NY

Party in the Trees, Under the Stars. Join us surrounded by friends, food, art, music, and surprises among the trees and rolling hills. Come faraway with us.

Rain or Shine.  Magical festive attire.  Shoes for the meadow.

DJ set by Helado Negro.  Food by Yann Nury.  Tequila touch by Casa Dragones.

With Gratitude to

Co-Chairs

Virginia Lebermann & Fairfax Dorn

Host Committee

Event address will be shared upon attendance confirmation.