Curator, Samantha Friedman: Beginning in 1929, O’Keeffe started to spend summers in Abiquiú, New Mexico, where she would eventually settle. O’Keeffe said:
Actor (Georgia O’Keeffe): When I first saw the Abiquiú house, it was a ruin . . . I found a patio with . . . a long wall with a door on one side. That wall with a door in it was something I had to have. It took me 10 years to get it, three more years to fix the house so I could live in it, and after that, the wall with a door was painted many times.
Curator, Patricia Marroquin Norby: As an Indigenous woman, it’s complex to respond to how she understands the patio door. Abiquiú, or Abiquiú, was a Tewa or Hopi Pueblo for many years. O’Keeffe buys this home that was a center for the indigenous slave trade. She embraces it for its aesthetic quality, rather than making any attempt to understand the local history.
But I could really see why she was drawn to the home and especially the patio door. In her images of the door, you get this balance of rectangular shapes, of light and shadows that are repeated over and over to create this visual depth.
There’s moments where I feel really angry at her because of the privileged way that she entered into those spaces. I think eventually during her time in Abiquiú, she understood, that she was a visitor. She was a guest.
But I have a sense of compassion for the challenges that she faced as an artist, as a woman, and someone who was just really working to create her own place in this world.