Historic Santa Fe Foundation Presents Traces: Known and Un-Known, a Solo Exhibition by Christy Hengst. On view November 6- 28

The Historic Santa Fe Foundation (HSFF) is pleased to present Traces: Known and Un-Known, a solo exhibition of new works by Santa Fe artist Christy Hengst. The exhibition will be on view at The Gallery at El Zaguán, located at 545 Canyon Road, from November 6 through November 28, 2026.

Widely recognized for her public art installations—including public bus stops, sculpted birds in local parks, and creative civic projects—Hengst turns her focus in this exhibition toward archetypal imagery, dreams, and the lingering presence of people and places long past. Traces: Known and Un-Knownweaves together diverse media, combining lithography, silkscreened rice paper, text, direct drawing, and the sensuous pairing of fired porcelain and beeswax.

“As I paint, I look for ways to weave meaningful content together with visual decisions,” notes Hengst. “Layering images and materials allows for a dreamlike quality and an element of time to slip in. Recently, I’ve been exploring memory and the lasting influence of things and people long gone. I’ve become more aware of cause and effect: the traces of everything, from physical remnants to memories to the unmeasurable.”

She writes, “I’ve been looking at clouds. I swim on my back outside, without goggles, and just look at the clouds. Not in preparation to depict them, but to let myself be influenced by them… absorbing cloudness. Life is mysterious. I hope a person is reminded of that through this work.”

The exhibition highlights several distinct series that bring these concepts to life through tangible forms. Delicate porcelain slip-dipped pieces preserved in beeswax stand as physical shells of original objects that burned away during the firing process, leaving behind pure form. A series of triptychs inspired by Hengst’s parents bridges the intimate space between personal grief and collective recollection, while her Attic Dream series draws directly from the memory-adjacent collective unconscious. Anchoring these explorations is The Archetypal Grid, which utilizes lithographs as a structural foundation to probe universal images that evoke an instinctive bodily response, inviting viewers to suspend conventional categorization into the known and un-known.