Marisa Sage is Director and Head Curator of the New Mexico State University Art Museum in Las Cruces (NMUAM) and has over 15 years of curatorial experience. Most recently, however, she was selected as the curator of Contemporary Art Month’s (CAM) San Antonio’s 2025 Perennial exhibition. I recently had the opportunity to ask Sage about her journey to becoming a curator, where she draws inspiration, and her process for choosing artists for this year’s CAM Perennial show, The Inbetweenness.
Marisa Sage
Brianna Glass (BG): Can you tell me about your path to becoming a curator, and what art literature, artists, or curators, if any, have influenced your curatorial practice?
Marisa Sage (MS): I began curating while in graduate school at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2002. Some of my friends had a live/work loft space in the CopyCat building, where they had studios in their large loft-style apartment. Leading up to the apartment was a spacious, wide-open area that MICA students took turns curating.
Curating in the CopyCat building was my first experience organizing exhibitions, and from that point on, I was hooked. I went on to curate projects in Maryland and the D.C. area before moving back to New York, where I’m originally from. In New York I continued curating and in 2006 I opened my own gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which I called Like the Spice. There, I curated, directed, and sold artwork in the gallery, at art fairs, and alternative spaces. During that time, I also curated exhibitions for 92Y Tribeca.
A few of the curators who have inspired me throughout my practice are Lucy R. Lippard (who is based in New Mexico), Lowery Stokes Sims, Leslie-King Hammond (a grad advisor at MICA), Veronica Roberts, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Marcia Tucker of the New Museum, and Harald Szeemann, who curated the Venice Biennale in 1999.
Artists that interest me are Ann Hamilton, Mary Kelly, Jenny Morgan, Carrie Mae Weems, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, Sol LeWitt, and Patty Chang.
Writers/art literature and work that have influenced me are: Susan Sontag (everything), Seven Days in the Artworld by Sarah Thornton, everything written by Claire Bishop, Inside the White Cube by Brian O’Doherty, and all writing by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, but especially Ways of Curating and DO IT!
For a more extensive story about my curatorial history I recommend the Artist/Mother podcast.
BG: What concepts or themes do you enjoy exploring in your curatorial work?
MS: I generally begin with place and questions rather than predefined themes or concepts. Where am I? Why am I here? Who is here with me? Who is absent, and why? Who should be here? Why should there be an artist in this space? Why would people want or need artists here? Why does an artist need to be here? What can an artist contribute to this place? What can this place offer an artist?
Is the artist from this place? Does that matter? Who can this artist be shown with, and why? Who should they connect with, and for what purpose? What ideas emerge from this place? What concepts tie an artist to a location? Are there many artists working with those ideas in this space?
That’s maybe where I start.
BG: Was the CAM Perennial show, The Inbetweenness, a general idea you had before selecting artists and their work? Or did it evolve from the submissions you saw?
MS: It evolved as I moved from studio visit to studio visit. As I often do, I took notes and made audio recordings, and with each visit, I found myself writing “in between” — noting ideas of translation, transformation, the just-beyond, and other concepts that ultimately wove the exhibition together.
In each visit, in some way, the artists spoke about the fascinations of the in-between: between worlds, places, spaces, and mediums; what lies just behind, outside, beyond. The ways translation alters meaning, the space between two countries, the experience of living between cultures, the transition between genders, the process of becoming a mother — these fluid, slippery, and compelling moments became the connective thread of the show.
Brittany Ham and Marisa Sage
BG: What stood out about San Antonio artists? How do you think they convey the inbetweenness through their art?
MS: There is an energy in San Antonio that I have had a hard time describing once I leave. Every time I go there I feel it in the art, the artists, the city, the water, and the food. It’s a vibe. It’s a blend. It’s so invigorating. I have yet to go to San Antonio without leaving with a list of artists whose work I go on to follow for a long time. I assume that because it’s such an extraordinary place to live it attracts incredible makers, yet keeps its homegrown assets. Maybe also, because it’s still a relatively affordable place to live, it keeps its artists versus pricing them out of the ability to afford live/work spaces.
I also think [because] it is a super diverse place, most specifically with Mexican and American cultures … that you have a depth of artists who are making important work tied to that place. Lastly, I was really taken by how many artists had come to San Antonio through the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program: San Antonio, which is an incredible program and brings such talented artists and cultural practitioners to San Antonio, enriching the community.
BG: Hearing and seeing the word inbetweenness brings to mind words such as borders, boundaries, binaries, and of course, the common saying “between a rock and a hard place.” I’m curious about your word selection for the show’s title. Was the word meant to be a broader, less politically charged word that expresses complex and nuanced subjects like these ideas?
MS: All of it, and yes.
One of Brittany Ham’s works is titled It is not an ambitious time. I think that so clearly speaks to this in between place we are all at, and within in this moment. Some people speak about the pendulum swing, and we are at/in the center point or in between that social pendulum. Some say it’s the residual effects of COVID and the way that we have still not dealt with the ramifications and trauma of that time. I think it’s all of it.
A rock and a hard place, a crossroads, a conundrum, a fuzzy place without much clarity, and it’s hard to find our footing and or translate how we feel. We’re all just doing our best and much of what we see is what is happening in those spaces that are hard to define, translate, or understand. These artists in CAM seem to be able to distill these feelings, these moments, best articulate the culture at this time.
Marisa Sage and Jorge Villarreal
BG: How do artists occupy the inbetweenness?
MS: They are mediaries, mediums, translators, and transformers.
I wrote something for Jorge Villarreal’s work that I think really works for all the artists in the show: “the negotiation of self across borders, languages, histories, and place. Through color, symbolism, and iconography, examining the personal, cultural, and political spaces, revealing the fluidity of transition. These works invite reflection on how identities shift within these landscapes, emphasizing the ever-evolving nature of translation — of self, place, and experience — across physical and psychological borders.”
Something I wrote for Bella: Bella Martinez’s work focuses on the translation and transformation of materials, exploring the space between painting and sculpture. “Using materials like drywall, she investigates how gypsum — a seemingly fragile substance — becomes the structural core of a building. Her work plays with material ambiguity: paper pulp mimics canvas, airbrush resembles acrylic paint, and the boundary between painting and wall dissolves.”
Something I wrote about Gabi Magaly: “Through a sequence of images, Magaly mines the stages of personal reinvention following relationship-based trauma — some capturing the quiet, painful in-betweens, while others depict the reclamation of self.”
BG: All six artists have radically different approaches to their artmaking. Where do you see the viewer making connections to their interpretations of inbetweenness?
MS: I hope the connections are made within the spaces I created for each artist in the gallery. Rather than grouping their works together piece by piece, I collaborated with each of them to develop installations that reflect how their practices exist as complete environments within their individual studios. The connections emerge not from visual similarities, but through spatial relationships. For example, when you physically turn around in Josie Norris’ space and catch a glimpse of Gaby’s work diagonally across the room, that moment of inbetweenness becomes palpable.
I designed each installation to occupy a corner of the gallery, so the viewer is fully immersed in one artist’s world — but by simply turning, you find yourself between two distinct bodies of work. That transitional space is where I see the connections and interpretations take shape. From that vantage point, you can see Jorge’s “walls” from Huakai’s “windows,” Brittany’s narrative landscapes from Bella’s abstracted ones, and Josie’s transitioning family farm from Gaby’s post-trauma self-transformation. They are fully formed artist installations that ask the viewer to make connections and interpretations themselves while moving throughout the space.
Josie Norris and Marisa Sage
BG: Can you elaborate on a studio visit with one of the artists?
MS: Oh man, this is a tough one — each studio visit was so special in its own way. I was deeply inspired not only by each individual visit, but also by how each one informed the next, creating this unexpected rhythm and dialogue between practices and concepts.
I think the moment when the show really began to solidify for me was during my visit to Josie’s studio. Josie’s studio is in their home, and they truly live within their practice. As you saw in the installation at UTSA, that immersive quality came directly from their space. Their home was filled with photographs of their family farm — images were everywhere, covering walls, surfaces, even tucked into corners. The rest of the space was layered with artwork, some areas hung salon-style, others with images placed directly in front of each other in this rich, visual density. It was incredibly moving to be invited into that intimate environment. Josie had created a space of peace, safety, and intentional artistry; being there allowed me to understand the emotional and material depth of their work in a whole new way.
The Inbetweenness, the CAM Perennial exhibition, was on view at the UTSA Russell Hill Rogers Gallery from March 22 through April 12, 2025 as part of Contemporary Art Month (CAM), San Antonio’s programming and activities. Brianna Glass is the fourth recipient of the Contemporary Art Month Writer’s Fellowship.
