The Indigenous Knowledge Systems series is an ongoing collaboration between SITE SANTA FE and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) MFA in Studio Arts program. The lecture series addresses the latest developments in contemporary Indigenous arts history, theory, criticism, and practices.

07 JAN 2026

Indigenous Abstraction, Women's Labor, and Opacity in Modern and Contemporary Native Art

Taylor Rose Payer is an Anishinaabe scholar and PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Minnesota. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she spent a decade working in art museums and galleries, earned an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University and received her BA from Dartmouth College. She was born and raised on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

Taylor Rose is the 2025–2026 Betsy Wyeth Fellow in Native American Art at the National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Under the guidance of advisors Anya Montiel and Mary Savig, she is conducting dissertation research focused on Native women artists and the politics of abstraction.

08 JAN 2026

Language of The Land

Steven J. Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, installation, video/film, photography, and community collaboration. Yazzie is a member of the Navajo Nation and a veteran of the Gulf War, serving honorably with the United States Marine Corps from 1988-1992. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Intermedia at Arizona State University and was named Outstanding Graduate by the Herberger Institute for Design and Art in 2014. Yazzie was a 2019-2020 Community Scholar for the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (in)Equality at University of Denver, Colorado. Additionally, Yazzie was a founding member of Postcommodity, an indigenous arts collective, and was the co-founder of the Museum of Walking.

Notable exhibitions include: the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver Art Museum, Colorado; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona. Yazzie has been selected for the 2025 Sharjah Biennial 16, UAE.

Yazzie has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada; Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Social Engagement Residency, Santa Fe, NM; Native Artist in Residence, Denver Art Museum, Colorado; and Center For the Future, Slavonice, Czech Republic. Yazzie is an Eiteljorg 2022 Contemporary Art Fellow, Indianapolis, IN and a 2024 UCross Fellow, Wyoming. He lives and works in Denver, Colorado.

09 JAN 2026

The Grid and the Water

Maya Wilson-Sánchez is an Andean curator, art historian, and writer. Born in Ecuador and currently based between Toronto and New York City, their work centres on the development, movement, and exchange of art across the Americas. Wilson-Sánchez was the 2020 recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators and a 2021 participant at the Tate Intensive in London, UK. They were an Editorial Resident at Canadian Art, a Curatorial Resident at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and an Associate Editor at C Magazine. They curated Intra-Action: Live Performance Art (2016, 2017) at Xpace Cultural Centre, Living Room (2017) at the Royal Ontario Museum, DIY Love: Queer Knowledge & History Then, Now, and Forever (2017) at Pride Toronto, and Grounding (2020) at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Most recently, they served as one of the main curators for Toronto’s Year of Public Art, curating the 2021-2022 exhibition series I am Land, and the 2023-2024 show Replicas and Reunions: Ancient and Contemporary Ceramics from Ecuador at the Gardiner Museum.