Joanna Keane Lopez is an artist working across sculpture, moving image, photography, site-specific installation, and earthen architecture. Drawing from adobe building traditions, archival materials, and family and regional histories, her work examines relationships among land, architecture, craft, and militarization.
Inheriting adobe building knowledge from her family and community in New Mexico, Keane Lopez works within the architectural craft practice of enjarradoras and adoberas—women who specialize in traditional earthen construction. Through sculpture, installation, and educational workshops, she extends these building practices and craft histories into the present, tracing how knowledge is preserved, adapted, and transmitted through material practice. Her work considers how vernacular architecture carries craft knowledge and layered cultural and colonial histories, as well as the enduring effects of militarization and environmental contamination on the landscapes and communities of the American Southwest.
Keane Lopez has exhibited nationally at institutions including SITE Santa Fe; the Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the San José Museum of Art; the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum; the Akron Art Museum; the Sarasota Art Museum; and the Harwood Museum of Art. Her work has received support from the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.