SANTA FE — In DAHODIYINII – SACRED PLACES, Dakota Mace’s first solo museum exhibition at SITE Santa Fe, the Diné artist confronts genocide, grief, and inequality not through a linear narrative, but through a framework of Ałk’idáá: “events stacked up through time.” In extended exhibition labels, she writes: “ … in Diné philosophy, time is not a line; it’s a series of layers, movements unfolding simultaneously. The past isn’t something distant or detached — it’s woven into the present, and the present is braided with the future.” Mace confronts these layers head-on, investigating not just what is visible on the surface but the deeper strata of memory and Diné experience.
The exhibition opens with “Halchíí (Red area)” (2024), an earthen wall mural made in collaboration with Keyah Henry (Diné), which recalls deep red watercolor. It roots viewers in Land as both witness and archive. Composed of cochineal pigment, ash, corn pollen, and earth gathered from Diné Bikéyah (Navajo homelands), the work is site-specific and impermanent — adhered directly to the gallery wall, it will vanish when the exhibition ends.
