Outburst brings 34 artists, many Vietnam veterans, to Santa Fe

Marcus Bennett

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, N.M., is hosting 34 artists, more than half of them Vietnam War veterans, in “Outburst: Native American Art After Vietnam” through April 17.

Michael Naranjo, one of the 34 artists, supplies a direct account of combat and its aftermath. The last time he saw the light of day was Jan. 8, 1968, just before a grenade blast left him blind. He had spent about two months in Vietnam as a 23-year-old private in the U.S. Army.

The blast took both eyes and a finger on his right hand. It also left him with most of the feeling and dexterity in that arm. Naranjo went on to become a sculptor, drawing much of his inspiration from memories of his early life in northern New Mexico, Santa Clara Pueblo and Taos, some 50 miles northeast.

Naranjo, now 82, said: “Everything is, I guess, visual imagery within my mind and my mind’s eye.” He spoke in an interview at his tranquil, art-filled home in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque. He lives there with Laurie, his wife of more than 48 years.

Naranjo’s account separates seeing from the ability to make images. The mind’s image, as he describes it, holds what the world once supplied through vision. Sculpture becomes a means for giving shape to memory, place and experience.

The exhibition places that personal account within a broader context. Its title locates Native American art after Vietnam, and more than half of its 34 artists are Vietnam War veterans. The roster therefore makes veterans a central part of the exhibition.

What does the exhibition change for viewers?

For a visitor, the change is interpretive. The Wheelwright Museum’s title and artist selection place Native American art and veterans’ experiences in the same presentation. Naranjo’s example makes that relationship concrete.

Naranjo’s early life supplies the second line. His memories reach from Santa Clara Pueblo to Taos, some 50 miles northeast. The distance keeps them distinct. Each place remains attached to a lived geography that informs his sculpture.

That geography also makes the exhibition’s title more than a period label. “After Vietnam” reaches into Naranjo’s account of bodily change and into the visual images formed after sight was taken away.

His injury remains a condition of his work rather than its principal subject. The evidence is narrow and concrete: a practice grounded in recollection, place and images formed without sight.

The exhibition gathers 34 artists under a shared historical frame, while Naranjo’s career demonstrates how one veteran makes work whose central materials are memory and place.

For viewers, that means reading the exhibition through specific lives rather than as evidence of a single Native experience after war. Naranjo’s case supports the distinction. His work comes from his own memories of particular northern New Mexico places and his own experience of injury.

The Wheelwright Museum places those differences within the shared frame of service and its aftermath. As “Outburst” continues through April 17, it asks visitors to read Native art after Vietnam through individual memory, physical consequence and artistic practice, rather than through a single collective story.