Artist Maja Ruznic has created a suite of large, luminous canvases responding to early 20th-century paintings glorifying Spanish colonization at the St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art, as part of the 12th Site Santa Fe International. The exhibition, curated by Cecelia Alemani and titled "Once Within a Time," opened last week. Ruznic, a Bosnian war refugee living in Placitas, New Mexico, confronts the problematic history depicted by artist Donald Beauregard, who died at 29 before completing the commission, which was later finished by uncredited artists Carlos Vierra and Kenneth Chapman.
This project matters because it uses contemporary art to critically reexamine colonial narratives embedded in public art spaces, filtering regional history through Ruznic's personal experience of displacement and loss. By placing her work in direct dialogue with Beauregard's paintings, Ruznic transforms the auditorium into a space for conversation about conquest, trauma, and renewal, highlighting how art can address historical violence and offer new perspectives on collective memory.