Joanna Keane Lopez

Thrice Layered traces, blurs and layers the historical and contemporary colonial power of the U.S. nuclear industry's impact upon land in New Mexico. These ideas are examined in relation to archival documents—aerial perspective maps, diagrams, architectural plans and eye witness drawings—specific to the region that identify nuclear industrial cartographies and fallout locations from the world's first nuclear bomb, the Trinity Test, in south central New Mexico. 

Utilizing adobe and acrylic pigment, Keane Lopez transforms these cartographies, drawings and maps into layered collages of abstracted photography. The photos were taken during research trips to the McDonald adobe ranch house, the Trinity site and surrounding ranching communities impacted by the 1945 radioactive fallout, such as Carrizozo, New Mexico. Along with archival imagery and the documentation of the architecture of weapons testing, the series gestures toward the violent nuclear narratives that lie unassumingly within the contemporary American built landscape.

The artist’s family is from Socorro, 35 miles from Trinity. Her father Damacio was 2 years old at the time of the detonation. Watch the film, First We Bombed New Mexico by Lois Lipman, and visit the Tularosa Downwinder Consortium website to learn more.

The exhibition is currently exhibited at the de Saisset Museum of Santa Clara University in California. Curated and organized by Dr. Ciara Ennis, Lauren Baines and Chris Sicat.

October 2, 2024 - Spring 2025

This work is dedicated to all of the people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the development of nuclear weapons. Special thank you to musician and downwinder activist Paul Pino, Myrriah Gómez; author of Nuclear Nuevo México, spokeswoman of Tularosa Downwinder Consortium; Tina Cordova, and her niece Mackenzie Cordova.

Adobe, pine, paper, linen. 116.5” x 77”. 2023.

Concoctions of soil, wheat straw, textiles, paper and pine, define the vernacular adobe architecture of New Mexico, particularly the artist’s great grandfather’s home in Socorro, New Mexico. Ghost spell is a traditional remedy that uses these ingredients to restore the loss of architectural traditions and heal fragmentation.

Shown at Coulter Gallery of Stanford University and Lisson Gallery, NYC

Photos by Yunfei Ren

Adobe, pine, viga, linen, alíz. 16.5’x1’x11’ with varied dimensions

SOMArts Cultural Center

San Francisco, CA

September 14, 2023-October 6, 2023

The Hurt and Love of Chamisal explores the immediacy of material, craft and scale of earthen architecture and is an installation made of adobe, pine, viga, linen and alíz. The work is a dreamscape of the architecture of my family land known as Lopezville in Socorro, New Mexico, a dusty piece of land holding a handful of homes belonging to various López family members throughout multiple generations. Lopezville was originally known as Chamisal, according to family documents outlining the 1815 land grant given to my great great great grandfather Rafael López y Luna. Importantly, the territory of Socorro was originally the Native land of the Piro Pueblo with its own place names of Teypana and Pilabó. With the United States acquisition of New Mexico in 1912 and the post WWII mass push for industrialized building materials in the 1950s —- anglicized assimilation took root in the Spanish language and the subsequent replacement of place names, hence Chamisal to Lopezville. Material choices for the construction of shelter in Chamisal also changed with the passing of time. The oldest buildings are made of adobe, the following are a combination of adobe and cinder block, next is wood frame and stucco and finally the most recent are trailers. What defines vernacular changes with time and what materials are most readily and cheaply available can be seen walking down the dirt road of Chamisal today. Throughout the 1800s and into the 1950s, the clay rich dirt gathered in my family’s yard and wood timbre from ponderosa pine trees from the nearby mountains were the most readily available materials for building a home. After WWII and its mass push for industrialization and the birth of the Nuclear Age in the 1950s, there was a sharp decline in adobe architecture being the favored vernacular building method. This is due to a number of factors including the loss of family and community connectedness to support one another in shared labor for adobe construction. Young people left small towns for upward social mobility and elders died to common ailments of cancer, heart disease and diabetes and with them the knowledge of the how to source, make and build with adobe. An easily assembled wood frame house or affordable trailer take the place of an age old stylistic architectural tradition of land within one generation — my father’s generation. The Hurt and Love of Chamisal is a meditation and dreamscape of these histories.

Adobe, ponderosa pine, colcha embroidery, churro wool, linen, natural dye, tin, digital print. 2024.

On July 13, 1945, a group of military personnel and scientists congregated together in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert basin to assemble the plutonium core for the first ever nuclear weapon. The assembly did not occur within expected sites of warfare, like a military base or laboratory, rather these men gathered in the master bedroom of an adobe home that once belonged to the McDonald family. The Atomic Age was thus born from within what was once a familial site of intimacy and domesticity. The multimedia installation, Batter my heart, three-person'd God, contends with the legacy of the Trinity Test upon the land and nearly half a million predominantly Latine and Indigenous people that live in the 150-mile radius of the detonation. The artist, whose ancestral land is only 35 miles northwest of the Trinity site, reveals how the insidious forces of displacement, colonial violence, land contamination, and nuclear terror converge here within the intimate space of a local family’s adobe home. 

In the installation, the bed—a place of rest, birth, love, sex, and death—symbolizes a contact zone wherein the local and domestic are invaded by the occupying forces of the US military industrial complex. This private site of tenderness, therefore, absorbs an apparatus of colonial violence inflicted upon the region; much like the soil and earthen-adobe structures in the Jornada del Muerto absorbed the poisonous remnants of plutonium and radiation after the Trinity blast. However, the bed is not simply a reactive object that exists passively within the installation, rather it can also be interpreted as agential and vital—an active site of recovery. In fact, by resituating the bed within the home, Keane Lopez rehumanizes and reclaims the site of nuclear assembly, foregrounding the space as a place of intimacy, not war. This restorative practice is particularly reflected in the traditional techniques that Keane Lopez uses to construct the handmade bed and weave the colcha embroidery that ornaments it. Through craft, adobe brick, and experimental installation, Batter my heart, three-person'd God reorients the gaze to local histories that have been written out of the grand narrative of the Atomic Age and reclaims these sites as places of domesticity and belonging that carry the weight of US colonial violence within them.

-Sofía Silva, PhD Art History

Currently being exhibited at the Stanford Art Gallery: May 14, 2024-June 17, 2024

Adobe, land sourced color clays (San Luis, CO, Taos, NM, Terlingua, TX) & mica. 2022.

18’x1’x6 1/2’

This site-specific installation rethinks the idea of resolana, a new mexican architectural term that Lopez describes as a “sunny side of a wall where people come together to create community”. The artist designed this sculptural installation made of adobe and alíz (colored clay slip paints) as a threshold that explores land-based traditions as a form of medicine, blessing, and a spell toward future reimaginings. The mud-plastered façade is finished with clays ranging from southern colorado, northern new mexico to west texas and mixed with a glittery silicate mineral called mica. Handmade adobes from albuquerque constitute the core of the sculpture. In keeping with the tradition of resolana, Lopez invites New Mexico and Arizona based performers to activate the installation while it is on display.

This work is a part of the State of The Art 2020: Constructs traveling exhibition that originally began at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and is currently on display at the Sarasota Art Museum.

Adobe, dirt, wheelbarrow, shovel, screen, wooden forms, creosote, manta de techo, liquor bottle shards, calcimine paint on adobe, tumbleweeds, archival photographs, maps & documents.

On view at 516 ARTS from February 19, 2022 - May 14, 2022

Among the assemblage in Joanna Keane Lopez’s Lópezville, Socorro is a manta de techo, the dried branches of jediondia/creosote, and at least five generations of remnants — shards of liquor bottles, barbed wire, and old cans — evidence of past generations of López family memebers who made their lives on the same sprawling plot of land. The artist’s father Damacio gifted her one adobe house from Lópezville, part of a Spanish land grant awarded to 70 families in 1815, and now largely abandoned by most of the López family. Much of what she brings into the gallery emblematizes that which has been left behind.

The manta de techo comes from the home of Lopez’s great grandfather Abelino López, who built the adobe around the turn of the century. The muslin hung beneath the ceiling, catching dirt that fell from the roof. For decades, however, it’s dangled from the vigas, forgotten. The creosote comes from the wider landscape where it grows abundantly. It has been said by traditional healers to clean out the body from environmental toxins. Socorro has seen the radioactive ballistic investigations of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology involving the testing of depleted uranium penetrators in the Socorro mountain. The artist brings both the remnants from the land, homes and lives lived into the gallery, along with adobe bricks crafted by hand from earth derived from Lopezville. Lópezville, Socorro asks viewers to contemplate the site as an axis of land use, traditional practices, pollution and contamination of land, and other histories of place, including the original presence of the Piro Pueblo of Teypana and Pilabó.

Curated by Alicia Inez Guzmán & Ric Kasini

Adobe, land-sourced colored clays (from San Luis, Colorado, Terlingua, Texas; and Algodones, New Mexico), and mica. 18’x1’x7’. 2022.

On display at Akron Art Museum from November 11, 2022- February 26, 2023

The Spanish word resolana can refer to many things, including sunshine or a place to rest. In New Mexican culture, a resolana is the south-facing side of a building where people gather together. Here in this gallery, Joanna Keane Lopez spent two weeks building a unique resolana out of adobe and land-sourced colored clays from New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas, as well as local materials from Ohio. Handmade adobes from Albuquerque constitute the core of the sculpture and its mud-plastered surface glitters with a mineral called mica. In keeping with the tradition of la resolana, Lopez invites performers to activate the installation while it is on display. The artist intends for her work to function as a blessing or a spell, providing healing as well as an opportunity to reimagine land-based traditions and ensure their continuation into the future.

Adobe, mica, land sourced colored clays (Taos, NM, Terlingua, TX, Lajitas, TX), mineral pigment, casein. 27.5’x9’x7’. Individually 9’x1’x7’. 2021.

SITE Santa Fe

October 1, 2021- January 9, 2022

Artist Joanna Keane Lopez creates work that looks both forward and backward through time. ​​Integrating large-scale installation, earthen architecture and land-sourced materials, Keane Lopez embraces wild crafting and adobe architectural practices, continuing the legacy of the adobera and enjarradora (women who are masters at constructing and preserving earthen buildings).

Land Craft Theatre includes two large-scale installations: one made of adobe, plastered with colored clays and hand-harvested alíz (a clay slip paint), and the other of paper and wire, brought to life using plant and insect dyes. Keane Lopez’s colorful adobe sculptures invite visitors to move freely around and between them, inspiring reflection and playfulness while reveling in the simplicity and strength of mud as material, and revitalizes the traditional language of adobe architecture and uses it to build understanding of, and connection to, the land. Suspended from the ceiling are vibrant cloud-like sculptures. Their lightness and transparency produce dramatic billowing forms that capture the hues of the landscape through the botanical dyes used to stain them. Together, these two installations highlight the theatrics of land and sky.

​​Adobe is a connective force with the power to bring communities together and build relationships to land and place. To build with adobe requires many hands. For this project Keane Lopez invited Issac Logsdon, adobero and Assistant Program Director of Santa Fe, New Mexico’s Cornerstones Community Partnerships, to join her in teaching a two-day workshop to ten volunteers. Carrying on the traditional forms of instruction, they worked together to teach in a hands-on process of showing and doing, just as their teachers taught them. Throughout this exhibition, Keane Lopez enriches our understanding of land-sourced materials, bringing into focus every aspect of the creative process and the intimate dialogue between artist, medium, form and color.

Land Craft Theatre was organized by Curator Brandee Caoba. Special thanks to ​​Exhibitions Manager Max Holmes, Sandro Canovas, Joe Foreman, Will Geusz, Sarah Habib, Alhelí Harvey, Amie LeGette, Drew Lenihan, Issac Logsdon, Kateri López, Candice Moya, Ronald Rael, Donaji Ramirez, Kaitlin Schramm, Christie Stidham, Karima Walker, Ruben Zuñiga

SITE Santa Fe’s exhibitions are made possible by contributions to our Exhibition Fund.

Paper, wire, chamisa flowers, marigold, indigo, cochineal, acacia, walnut hull, casein. 2021.

SITE Santa Fe

October 1, 2021- January 9, 2022

Artist Joanna Keane Lopez creates work that looks both forward and backward through time. ​​Integrating large-scale installation, earthen architecture and land-sourced materials, Keane Lopez embraces wild crafting and adobe architectural practices, continuing the legacy of the adobera and enjarradora (women who are masters at constructing and preserving earthen buildings).

Land Craft Theatre includes two large-scale installations: one made of adobe, plastered with colored clays and hand-harvested alíz (a clay slip paint), and the other of paper and wire, brought to life using plant and insect dyes. Keane Lopez’s colorful adobe sculptures invite visitors to move freely around and between them, inspiring reflection and playfulness while reveling in the simplicity and strength of mud as material, and revitalizes the traditional language of adobe architecture and uses it to build understanding of, and connection to, the land. Suspended from the ceiling are vibrant cloud-like sculptures. Their lightness and transparency produce dramatic billowing forms that capture the hues of the landscape through the botanical dyes used to stain them. Together, these two installations highlight the theatrics of land and sky.

​​Adobe is a connective force with the power to bring communities together and build relationships to land and place. To build with adobe requires many hands. For this project Keane Lopez invited Issac Logsdon, adobero and Assistant Program Director of Santa Fe, New Mexico’s Cornerstones Community Partnerships, to join her in teaching a two-day workshop to ten volunteers. Carrying on the traditional forms of instruction, they worked together to teach in a hands-on process of showing and doing, just as their teachers taught them. Throughout this exhibition, Keane Lopez enriches our understanding of land-sourced materials, bringing into focus every aspect of the creative process and the intimate dialogue between artist, medium, form and color.

Land Craft Theatre was organized by Curator Brandee Caoba. Special thanks to ​​Exhibitions Manager Max Holmes, Sandro Canovas, Joe Foreman, Will Geusz, Sarah Habib, Alhelí Harvey, Amie LeGette, Drew Lenihan, Issac Logsdon, Kateri López, Candice Moya, Ronald Rael, Donaji Ramirez, Kaitlin Schramm, Christie Stidham, Karima Walker, Ruben Zuñiga

SITE Santa Fe’s exhibitions are made possible by contributions to our Exhibition Fund.

Paper, wire, willow branches, aliz mud plaster, adobe bricks, mica, sheep wool, casein, onion skins, cochineal insects, black walnut, indigo, marigold & chamisa flowers, prickly pear, osage orange, turmeric. 5’x5'x6'. 2016.

Adobe, land sourced colored clays (San Luis, CO, Talpa, NM, Taos, NM, Tijeras, NM Lajitas, TX, Terlingua, TX, Urique, México, Ojinaga, México), casein & mica. 9’x1’x7’. 2021.

The Adobe Color Laboratory exhibition at Blue Star Contemporary is a new project by Joanna Keane Lopez. The exhibition unfolds around a centerpiece sculpture composed of adobe bricks, a form indicative of Lopez’s signature methods. Surrounding the architectural sculpture in the gallery are fragments of field experiments, “sketches,” “polaroids,” “tools,” “raw materials of mica and straw,” “land sourced earthen colored clay pigments,” and adobe bricks themselves investigated as paintings. All of these materials point us to some of the possibilities of the process, situating adobe as building, sculpture, and painting practices in the context of contemporary art methods.

The samples and studies illustrate the alchemic qualities of adobe. In these subtle references to the laboratory environment Lopez also hopes the experimental, collaborative, and living nature of the process becomes more visible. Adobe building relies on communities of artisans and craftspeople along with intergenerational teaching and mentorship to pass along its methods. Lopez works to continue these traditions and histories and draws from a well of familial connections to adobe architecture. Her work also explores new possibilities and futures for the medium.

Lopez’s centerpiece sculpture distills what we find in her laboratory. An arched wall rich with glistening mica flakes and tinted with land sourced colored clays simultaneously references interior and exterior space — the natural adobe hue often most visible on exteriors and pigmented washes on interior walls. Lopez’s play with material, color, and architectural form point to a theme of balance and dichotomies, which are perhaps inherent to living in an earthen structure. To occupy earthen clay is to be both inside building and inside earth. It is both natural and human made. This balance is where Lopez engages the viewer through methods steeped in both tradition and innovation.

-Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray, Curator of Blue Star Contemporary

Adobe brick, mirror, lime wash & mica. 15'x5'x8'. 2017.

A public art installation for T.I.M.E. "Temporary Installations Made for The Environment" Edgewood 2017 w/ New Mexico Arts: Art in Public Places. 

A dance of us (un baile de nosotros). Adobe brick, mud plaster, alíz, mica and mirror. 19’x3’x14’. 2020.

This site-specific installation rethinks the idea of la resolana, a New Mexican architectural term that Lopez interprets as a “south facing side of a wall where people congregate” in the bright sunshine. The artist designed this half-moon adobe brick wall as a threshold that represents unity, duality and multiplicity. The mud-plastered facade is finished with materials that Lopez locally harvested and mixed with a glittery silicate mineral called mica. Handmade bricks constitute the core of the sculpture. The three circular yellow mirrors symbolize the sun while the rectangular turquoise mirrors offer opportunities for reflection. In keeping with the tradition of la resolana, Lopez invites New Mexican performers to activate the structure when it is on display.

On display at The Momentary of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for the State of The Art 2020 exhibition, Feb. 22- May 24, 2020.

Expanding Sequences is a site-specific installation commissioned by the Harwood Art Center of Albuquerque, NM for their community celebration, Encompass. 

Adobe bricks, mirrors, lime wash, mica. 18'x5'x8'. 2018. 

Adobe bricks, mirror, lime wash, mica, cotton, cochineal insects, onion skins. 8’x15’x2’. 2018.

Nine Ways to Say Hello is an abstracted and conceptual work surrounding the subject matter of race & place in New Mexico. The materials of mud, lime wash, mirrors and cotton dyed with cochineal and onion skins are characters in a story. 

The brownness of the adobe bricks is white-washed with lime; white in the front, brown in the back, a duality of colors and identities. The cotton fabric, a material that we weave into an integrated whole and then wrap our bodies in… is dyed with cochineal, an insect native to the Southwest that nests on the prickly pear cactus along with local and imported onion skins referencing layers that cover a surface or a body. The circles hold space for wholeness... while the nine adobe structures stand separately in a state of fragmented assemblage. Nine Ways to Say Hello engages the observer in multiplicity and reflection. 

On view at the Art Museum of The National Hispanic Cultural Center May 4, 2018 - February 28, 2019.

About the exhibition: Because It’s Time: Unraveling Race and Place in NM examines race and identity in New Mexico and is a space for artistic expression that grapples with the complexities of who we are, how we are understood, and how that impacts the way we live (or don’t) in a variety of places.  The exhibition features approximately 26 newly created artworks by artists with different experiences in New Mexico alongside works from the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum’s permanent collection. All of the artworks delve into race and place through an intersectional lens alongside gender, sexuality, class, nationality, citizenship status, etc. from local, national, and international perspectives.

New Mexico Remembers, is a collage of the Trinity nuclear bomb and traditional wooden window designs emphasizing the architectural legacy of vernacular architecture and communities of New Mexico that have been impacted in the aftermath of the 1945 Trinity detonation.

New Mexico Remembers is included in the exhibition and publication, Artists Against The Bomb: Posters in Support of The Treaty On The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a collaboration between Estudio Pedro Reyes and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. The exhibition of the posters, and the launch of the publication, took place at the Judd Foundation in New York City in December 2023.