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The prominent British Ghanaian curator, broadcaster and writer Ekow Eshun has been selected to curate the 13th SITE Santa Fe International Biennial, which is slated to open in the summer of 2027. The former director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, Eshun has been an independent curator for over a decade.

The most recent SITE Santa Fe International exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, did not call itself a “biennial,” because more than two years had elapsed since the previous iteration. By using the term “biennial” again, SITE is signaling its intent to maintain a regular two-year schedule moving forward.

Eshun was in Santa Fe on March 20 to conduct preliminary research and meet with SITE Santa Fe staff.

“I have some core themes in my head, but right now, the purpose of this visit and successive visits is to test those out,” Eshun said. “I will say, the thing that draws me here is New Mexico’s incredibly layered and entangled history of people and place — migration and presence and even dispossession. These histories of different communities, different cultural groups and different artistic groups … are a real point of inspiration.”

Many of Eshun’s previous exhibitions have focused on cultural identity and race, including “The Time Is Always Now” — a Black portraiture show at London’s National Portrait Gallery — and “In the Black Fantastic” at Hayward Gallery, which featured African diasporic artists using speculative fiction, magic and myth to explore identity.

“So much of the work of artists, wherever they are situated, has to do with world-making and inviting us to see anew,” Eshun said. “Artists are really good at reminding us that what we thought we saw, what we thought was familiar, can actually be strange and extraordinary. … To that extent, the Land of Enchantment is an intriguing proposition, because, as an outsider who’s been to Santa Fe, and to New Mexico, just a couple of times before, everything is strange and fantastic and wonderful.”

Eshun intends to follow the precedent set by Alemani of extending the biennial beyond the walls of the institution, reaching into parts of Santa Fe where art is not typically seen.

“The expansiveness of the 12th International reaching out across the city, that’s part of the excitement of a biennial, I think — discovering the city simultaneously while encountering art,” he said. “The process of discovery, of surprise, of revelation … to discover a town and discover the art situated within it, and to experience physical traveling within a city — that’s all part of the experience.”

Eshun underscored that it is far too early in the process to hammer down the themes of his biennial with any precision, but history, culture and wonder were words that kept popping up.

“All the different constituent elements of a place can be the ingredients of wonder. They can lead us into new territories. And it’s not even necessarily about speculative territories, or even about myth. It’s the fact that already the everyday is layered. Already the everyday is potentially a site of magic,” Eshun said. “So, I’m interested in the quotidian as much as I’m interested in the speculative or the subconscious. … I’m interested in all the ways that artists can encourage us both to treasure the ordinary world and to recognize that there’s very little that’s ordinary about the world.”

Eshun acknowledged that not all artists see magic or wonder when they look at the world today.

“We live in a world that’s riven in all kinds of ways at the moment. There seem to be divisive narratives at play. It’s a fraught time,” Eshun said. “But my take right now — and I’m a year and a half out from the biennial — is that I’m not looking for a show that makes a direct response to that, per se. I’m interested, really, in how artists are always navigating the complexities of the current moment, whatever that moment looks like.”

Instead of searching for artists making overt political statements, Eshun said he is looking for complexity and nuance.

“I think artists are very good at describing the texture of a time — not necessarily like, ‘This is how we should think,’ ‘This is what we should do,’ but maybe, ‘This is how we are feeling,’ ‘This is the quality of the air,’ ‘This is what the solidity — or lack of solidity — of the ground feels like,’” Eshun said. “A lot of this (curatorial process) for me is trying to understand what they are seeing, what they are feeling and what they are imagining. It’s from there that we proceed.”

Eshun said he wants the themes of the exhibition to develop organically out of conversations with the participating artists.

“The role of a curator is not to impose a particular narrative on anything,” Eshun said. “It’s to stop and listen (to the artists), then hopefully frame a context in which we can see the perspectives … and imaginings of those artists more clearly.”

The ultimate goal is for the artworks themselves to shine.

“I have one simple rule that I try to hold onto when it comes to making exhibitions, which is, ‘Show, don’t tell,’” Eshun said.

“Show, don’t tell” is a writing technique, commonplace in creative writing courses, where the author is encouraged to use vivid sensory details to create an immersive experience for the reader, as opposed to simply telling the reader what’s happening through exposition. Eshun applies the concept to curation.

“I’m not trying to tell you anything,” Eshun said. “The artworks gather in a space. Visitors come. The exhibition is animated by that engagement. The works, hopefully, can speak. Hopefully, the works might even sing. The artworks and the visitors could form a chorus. That’s what I’m going for. … We’re all engaged in a process of exploration and discovery.”

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the sa���ʴ�ý������ҳ���. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at .