In a deliberate act of cultural reclamation and redefinition, a compelling exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe showcases the profound and enduring connection of Tewa people to their ancestral lands, directly challenging the dominant narrative that has long conflated the region with the artistic legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe. Within the museum’s galleries, Jason Garcia, an artist from Santa Clara Pueblo (Kha’p’o Owingeh) with the Tewa name Okuu P’in, has prominently displayed nineteen of his paintings depicting Ts’í P’ín, known to Spanish speakers as Cerro Pedernal or "Flint Hill." This prominent mesa in northern New Mexico has been a subject of artistic fascination for centuries, but Garcia’s intention is to significantly outnumber O’Keeffe’s own depictions of the landmark within the museum that bears her name, aiming for over thirty works in total under the overarching project titled "Our Private Mountain."

The exhibition, "Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country," features the work of twelve Indigenous Tewa artists, scholars, and culture bearers, intentionally juxtaposed with O’Keeffe’s celebrated paintings. O’Keeffe’s iconic renderings of the Southwest—her sweeping landscapes, magnified desert flowers, animal bones, and adobe buildings—have become so deeply ingrained in the American consciousness that they often serve as the sole visual reference for northern New Mexico. Her landscapes, in particular, were noted for their conspicuous absence of human figures, fostering an impression of an empty, isolated wilderness. This curated vision has coalesced into the widely adopted phrase "O’Keeffe Country," effectively eclipsing the vibrant, continuous presence of Indigenous peoples. "The reality, though," as Garcia articulates, "is that Tewa people are still living on this land. We still have our ancestral place names for pretty much all of Tewa country, and we’re still living within our four sacred mountains."

O’Keeffe herself famously referred to Ts’í P’ín as "my private mountain," stating in a 1977 Newsweek interview, "It belongs to me. God told me that if I painted it enough, I could have it." This possessive sentiment, amplified by subsequent marketing and tourism campaigns, has led to the region being predominantly understood through the lens of her artistic ownership. A 2021 New Mexico Tourism Department advertisement, for instance, revived another of her quotes, "When I got to New Mexico, that was mine," accompanied by imagery of horseback riders traversing the ochre bluffs. However, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum itself has actively pushed back against this interpretation, issuing a statement that it "does not support the use of Georgia O’Keeffe quotes describing the New Mexico landscape as ‘her country’ or claiming ‘that was mine.’" The museum acknowledged that while these quotes are from the artist, they represent "the language of possession, colonization, and erasure."

This institutional self-reflection has been underway for several years, culminating in initiatives like the 2020 panel discussion titled "This is Not O’Keeffe Country," which directly addressed the limitations and problematic implications of O’Keeffe’s narrative. The "Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country" exhibition represents a significant step in rectifying the historical oversight, aiming to fill the perceptual voids left by O’Keeffe’s pervasive influence and the commercial exploitation of her image. By foregrounding the perspectives and artistic expressions of Tewa individuals, the exhibition offers a more expansive and accurate portrayal of Indigenous presence, reminding viewers that O’Keeffe, despite her renown, was but one voice in the long and complex history of Tewa Nangeh.

Among the featured artists is Charine Pilar Gonzales, a filmmaker from San Ildefonso Pueblo and a fellow of the 2024 Sundance Institute Native Lab. Her experimental documentary, This Land Carries Us, is celebrated for its rich visual layering and stop-motion animation. One poignant scene opens with a sun-drenched stand of trees adorned with autumnal orange leaves, overlaid with a collage of Polaroid photographs featuring elders, children, and traditional ceramics. Gonzales’s artistic statement powerfully underscores the exhibition’s core message: "The visuals of this film reaffirm what has always been true: You cannot speak of Tewa land without also speaking of Tewa people."

The exhibition also highlights Eliza Naranjo-Morse’s mural, Coming Home. Crafted directly onto the gallery walls using clay gathered from across the region, the work offers a view northward through the badlands and mesas of Tewa Country, mirroring the artist’s experience of returning home from Santa Fe. Naranjo-Morse, from Kha’p’o Owingeh, uses her art to contemplate "the understated but significant acts that maintain relationship to land, preserve the Tewa language and the values of respect and reciprocity with all life."

Other works in the exhibition confront the specific perils facing New Mexico, particularly the devastating impacts of climate change and the legacy of nuclear weapons. Michael Namingha, an artist of Ohkay Owingeh and Hopi heritage, presents Disaster #8. This striking piece features a massive plume of smoke looming over a mountain landscape, a visual echo of both the 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire—New Mexico’s largest wildfire on record—and the iconic mushroom clouds of atomic explosions. Namingha strategically places his work in dialogue with O’Keeffe’s 1945 painting, Red with Yellow. While both artists employ a fiery palette of intense oranges and reds, Namingha’s colors specifically reference the Air Quality Index, a stark reminder of contemporary environmental concerns, and implicitly allude to the Trinity test, the world’s first atomic bomb detonation in a New Mexico desert erroneously deemed unpopulated by the military.

Jason Garcia’s Tewa Tales of Suspense series directly critiques O’Keeffe’s perceived appropriation of the landscape. His comic book-style clay tablets, each roughly the size of an iPad and fired using traditional Pueblo pottery techniques with natural pigments, present reimagined narratives. In one piece, O’Keeffe herself appears, clad in her signature black wrap dress and hat, standing before Ts’í P’ín. A sign behind her, initially reading "Welcome to O’Keeffe Country," has been altered, with "O’Keeffe" scratched out and replaced with "TEWA," a powerful visual assertion of Indigenous sovereignty.

The "Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country" exhibition unfolds against a backdrop of shifting national dialogues concerning history and representation. While the O’Keeffe Museum began its process of critically examining O’Keeffe’s role in Indigenous erasure six years ago, the current political climate has seen an emboldening of narratives that echo colonial and nationalist sentiments. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s recent use of John Gast’s Manifest Destiny painting, American Progress, accompanied by a quote that evoked white nationalism, exemplifies this trend. Concurrently, federal funding for institutions championing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, particularly those serving Indigenous and minority students, faces significant threats.

Bess Murphy, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s Luce Curator of Art and Social Practice and co-curator of the exhibition, emphasizes the importance of ethical collaboration, stating, "We can and should do better and work from a place of care instead of violence, fear or racism." The twelve participating artists were involved in every facet of the exhibition’s development, from selecting the O’Keeffe paintings to be displayed to writing their own exhibition texts, which were then meticulously reviewed by Dr. Beverly Singer, an Indigenous anthropologist from Santa Clara Pueblo. Garcia also noted that a collaborative map, delineating the six Tewa pueblos with their ancestral place names and villages, was a key component of this shared curatorial process.

Ultimately, "Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country" champions a framework of self-representation. Through artist and community-led exhibitions, it fosters nuanced and instructive dialogues about a region whose identity has too long been defined by external perspectives, offering a vital counter-narrative that centers the enduring presence and cultural richness of the Tewa people.