The Other Side of the Tracks, a group exhibition that explores the history of the Western railroad, is on view at Ogden Contemporary Arts through July 14 and then travels to RedLine Contemporary Art Center and 516 Arts.  Opening Night of The Other Side of the Tracks at OCA. Artwork pictured: Modesta Avila, 2024 by Tania Candiani. Photo: Dylan Totaro. Courtesy OCA. The Other Side of the TracksMay 3–July 14, 2024 Ogden Contemporary Arts, Ogden, Utah Ever since railways were used to connect the country, trains have been part of the American psyche. Heavily inscribed in our national mythos, t ..read more

In Oracle Bones from Red Butte Press, a writer and an artist wander the Utah wilderness to mystically discern the future. Then it comes true. A view from the production process of the fine-press book Oracle Bones by Terry Tempest Williams and Gaylord Schanilec. Courtesy Red Butte Press, University of Utah. Oracle bones—particularly the scapula of an ox or the underside (the plastron) of a tortoise’s shell—were used in ancient China, mainly during the Shang dynasty, for divination. When Utah-based author Terry Tempest Williams first saw oracle bones in China, “I remember how I felt… that they’v ..read more

Granary Arts’s Critical Ground advances a bold idea: in the Southwest arts community, the center shouldn’t hold. The Utah Center Marker designating the geographical center of the state. Photo: Lauren Tresp. Disclosure: Bianca Velasquez was a 2023 Granary Arts fellow, and received a stipend as part of her fellowship. Staff and contributors of Southwest Contemporary were also paid presenters. Utah’s mainstream art history is easy to trace, with the Utah Museum of Fine Arts striking the match in 1914, Art Barn and what is now known as the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art introducing contemporary a ..read more

Carried by the rails that their ancestors laid, rode, or resisted, nine artists challenge dominant histories of the Transcontinental Railroad in this multi-venue exhibition. Chip Thomas, The Bison Didn’t Cross The Tracks; The Tracks Crossed The Bison, 2024, inkjet print on silk, 15 x 10.4 ft. Courtesy of the artist. OGDEN—Conventional histories of the Transcontinental Railroad are speeding caravans of common themes such as American exceptionalism, economic power, ingenuity, and expansion. On May 10, 1869, Leland Stanford, co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, united the eastern ..read more

The Biocrust Project reveals the importance of protecting the desert’s biocrust in the face of climate change in an immersive collaboration between art and science. Jorge Rojas and Dr. Sasha Reed, The Biocrust Project, installation view, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, 2024. Photo: Zachary Norman, copyright UMOCA. Courtesy of the artist. SALT LAKE CITY—Entering the gallery space initiates a tangible contact with the desert’s living skin—that is, the biocrust. At UMOCA, a portion of the biocrust, a community of organisms—lichens, mosses, and cyanobacteria—that form a carpet-lik ..read more

In a world replete with ecological catastrophe and political turmoil, the customarily inward Andrew Alba channels calamities into catharsis for his exhibition of new works at Material. Andrew Alba, Dead, Not Dead, 2024, oil on canvas, 26 x 33 in. Courtesy the artist and Material, Salt Lake City. Andrew Alba: Inheritance March 1–April 19, 2024 Material, Salt Lake City On a pleasant day at the reservoir with his young daughter, artist Andrew Alba recalls with clarity his reaction to the startlingly low water levels. This indicator of a drastically changing ecological landscape flooded him with e ..read more

The narratives of the many racial and ethnic minorities whose experiences have indelibly shaped both Utah and American history deserve recognition and reckoning. Abandoned military barracks from the Second World War at the Wendover Air Force Base, Wendover Utah. Photo: Mark Holloway, Wendover Amy Airfield, 2006. cc-by-2.0 This article is part of our Living Histories series, a continuation of the ideas explored in  Southwest Contemporary Vol. 9. The weeks after Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer swept the 96th Academy Awards, nabbing the coveted Best Picture award, the dir ..read more

Experience Luis Alvaro Sahagún Nuño’s solo exhibition in Ogden, Utah. On view through April 21, 2024. Luis Alvaro Sahagún Nuño, Perpetual Ceremony no. 02, 2024, mixed media, 17.5 x 15 in. Courtesy of OCA. Healing Palette of Mystical Mestizaje on view through April 21, 2024 Ogden Contemporary Arts, Ogden, Utah Healing, at its best, seeks first to identify the sources behind the ailment or trauma, and then to intervene, diminishing further harm providing an opportunity for revival. Luis Álvaro Sahagún Nuño is a practitioner of curanderismo, a traditional Indigenous Mexican healing practice that ..read more

In this essay, nicholas b jacobsen braids together ongoing histories of Mormon and U.S. settler colonialism and genocide against Nuwu and Diné peoples at Pipe Spring National Monument and Lake Powell. nicholas b jacobsen, Maps of Indigenous lands occupied by the American West, 2023, digital collage featuring layered current and historic maps of Indigenous lands, waters, and trails occupied in the American West, 8.5 x 10.5 in. In the desert, there’s a spring. For thousands of years, Kai’vi’vits Nuwu families (Kaibab Southern Paiute) have cared for this water. They talked to it, farmed with it ..read more

Salt Lake City–based writer Paisley Rekdal discusses poetry as an archive and cultural connecter in the history of the transcontinental railroad. Book cover: West: A Translation, Copper Canyon Press, 2023. Portrait of Paisley Rekdal. Photo: Austen Diamond. Paisley Rekdal, who served as Utah’s Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2021, is the author of seven books of poetry, two essay collections, and a hybrid memoir. Her latest poetry book, West: A Translation, which was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2023 and longlisted for the National Book Award, imagines the untold stories of transcontinental r ..read more