Haunting Space + Holding Legacy
WHAT WE CARRY, WHAT WE RELEASE, AND WHAT REMAINS
August 1 - October 3, 2026
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Friday, 1 - 5 pm
By appointment: 520.222.9405
Opening Reception:
Saturday, August 1, 6-8 pm
The Projects/Space
174 E Toole Ave
Tucson, AZ 85705
Taos Abstract Artist Collective (TAAC) and the Southwest Black Arts Collective (SBAC) announce Haunting Space + Holding Legacy, an intermodal group exhibition opening August 1, 2026 at The Projects/Space in Tucson, Arizona, and running through October 3. The show brings together 13 artists, writers and creators from across the Southwest, curated by Béalleka Makau, bianca gabrielle goyette and Lauren Dana Smith.
The exhibition asks what we hold onto and what we release — the inheritances, hauntings and histories that shape us long after their origins fade. Drawing upon the word’s etymological roots in “to frequent” and “to bring home,” the show invites haunting not as something frightening but as a form of return: a preoccupation with what we were once part of, or still are. The works in the exhibition span grief, attachment, joyful remembrance, and excavation of self and environment — surfacing what’s been buried, intentionally or not.
Featured Artists
Alanna Airitam, Beedallo, Hakim Bellamy, Montanna Binder, Elizabeth Burden, Granville Carroll, Dora Dillistone, Dante Biss-Grayson, Julia Jameson, Rocío Rodriguez, Claire Warden, Paula Wilson and Caroline Yezer.
Curators
Béalleka Makau
Kenyan-born, California-raised, Béalleka Makau is a queer Black feminist academic-turned-lyrical essayist and storyteller. She earned her Ph.D. in postcolonial literature and theory from UT-Austin in 2005 and was a tenure-track professor of African and African American Literature, South Asian Diasporic Literature, American Studies, and Gender & Women’s Studies at Colgate, Michigan State, and Willamette Universities until 2015.
Based in Taos since 2018, Béalleka writes about and coaches teams and individuals to unlearn divisive stories about identity and power; cultivate empathy and connection; and get free using REDE (Radical Empathy Disrupts Entitlement, “ready”) a curriculum she originated in 2017. She is fascinated by how the stories we are told—and those we create—shape and justify categorical exclusions, and how we might realize our unified whole for the sake of our interdependent future.
A former Toni Morrison scholar and passionate reader of Octavia E. Butler's fiction for nearly 40 years, Béalleka’s writing has most recently appeared on Medium, been published in Bacopa Literary Review, and shared in numerous storytelling performances on both U.S. coasts. She is currently completing a memoir about her indigenous Kenyan/German-American ancestry; psychedelic and geographic excursions; self-emancipation from academia; and development of embodied, liberatory curricula.
bianca gabrielle goyette
bianca gabrielle goyette (b. 1980something) is a mechanic. In the sense that she practices constructing and deconstructing, dissecting and analyzing, listening and looking. She makes things. One might call her a transdisciplinary artist, but she prefers to be called by her name. She studies the materiality of sound, the cadence of fibers, and the nature of being together. She practices, and she makes. bianca works with materials that speak to the dichotomy between strength and fragility, the inextricably intertwined nature(s) of being. She is a vocalist working in acoustic resonance. She is a papermaker building and breaking fibril bonds through constructive synthesis and destructive laser processes. She is a writer analyzing the poetics of dialectics within the pathology of language, speech, phatic language, interjected sound, and non-lexical vocables. She is a photographer and videographer producing layered approaches to visual and auditory storytelling. She is a designer specializing in the fabrication of digital assets and experiences that reposition interaction models.
bianca holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BFA in Photography and Design from Parsons School of Design. She has studied Audio Engineering at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy and Papermaking at Oxbow School of Art and Artist Residency. She has performed and exhibited in venues, festivals, art fairs, museums, and galleries across the United States and Mexico. She has released multiple EPs, Publications, and Short Films and has been featured in others. She runs a statewide community arts organization in New Mexico (TAAC) and is a member of three (3) artist collectives (Southwest Black Arts Collective, nHnT, and One and Three Chairs).
bianca currently stays in Angel Fire, NM, and Brooklyn, NY, splitting her time between the sounds of the city and those of the mountains.
Lauren Dana Smith
Lauren Dana Smith (b. 1979, Philadelphia) is an artist, writer and art psychotherapist living in Taos, New Mexico. Smith’s research-based, multidisciplinary practice utilizes sculptural, digital, video and sound compositions to process land and body politics through a feminist lens. Smith studied painting, theatre and writing and received her B.A. from Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Smith is a faculty member at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she received her M.P.S. in Creative Arts Therapy and Creativity Development.
Smith’s work analyzes and deconstructs consciousness, collective experience and existential presence using an arts-based research practice that centers video and sound composition, large-scale sculpture and alt-narrative development. With a practice rooted in psychodynamic theory, critical pedagogy, relational neuroscience, sociocultural critique and arts-based community organizing, Smith’s work tests the boundaries we choose and those we don't.
Smith’s work has been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally. Smith has also published and presented widely within the fields of psychotherapy, art therapy, traumatology, pediatrics and palliative medicine. Smith is a Co-Founder of the Taos Abstract Artist Collective.
About TAAC: The Taos Abstract Artist Collective (TAAC) promotes abstract artists living and/or working in Northern New Mexico, toward the exchange of ideas, new aesthetics and creative concepts. TAAC is an inclusive group that amplifies self-identifying abstract artists living and working in Northern New Mexico, honoring our intersecting identities. All abstract artists are welcome in their pursuit of provocative expression. Taos Abstract Artist Collective produces curated and juried exhibitions, artist talks, studio visits and collaborative community concepts. TAAC is an artist-run volunteer 501(c)(3) organization.
About SBAC: The Southwest Black Arts Collective (SBAC) is creating connective and representative spaces for both emerging and established Black artists. Through diverse artistic practices, its members engage a myriad of themes, from cultural identity and heritage to the interplay between tangible and abstract elements in art.
The collective illuminates the richness and complexity of Black artistic expression. Addressing the often solitary nature of art-making, the collective focuses on networking, collaborating on art creation, resource sharing, and co-curating exhibitions and public programming to connect with audiences in the Southwest and beyond.