CONTEMPORARY LEDGER SERIES

My current practice emerges from a lifelong fascination with art’s printed matter—auction catalogs, magazines, and The Andy Warhol Diaries—materials I grew up studying for hours as portals into worlds beyond my own. I use these pages as the ground for my paintings, dipping and layering them into glue until they transform into skin. This process reflects Zuni reverence for all living things: paper becomes flesh, image becomes spirit. 

In 2022, an exchange of gifts between Sobé and ANOHNI led to a studio visit with ANOHNI and Participant Inc. Director Lia Gangitano. The resulting exhibition of recent paintings, sculptures, and works on paper borrows its title from ANOHNI and the Johnsons’ song “Why Am I Alive Now?” from their 2023 album My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, which features artwork by Sobé and Alvin Baltrop.

Reflecting on the work, ANOHNI wrote:

“Some of Sobé’s work portrays abstract faces and spirits of feminine, intergenerational, Two-Spirit figures in states of presence, radiance, and, at moments, suffering. The painting’s visceral effect startled me, and I asked Sobé if we could include the painting in the artwork of my last record. Sobé’s work has a charge of urgent disruption, emotional clarity, and vividness, with portraits that reflect centuries of gracious tradition, violence, moral authority, inspired curiosity, and confounding survival strategy. The way Sobé has at times bound Two-Spirit portraiture in conversation with images of Western figures from 20th-century underground queerdom is complex, decisive, and clarion. Sobé’s work is a revelation, articulating a new conversation, and drawing a generous teaching window.”

Building on these ideas, the works in Why Am I Alive Now? turn toward figures in states of continual becoming. Geometric subjects shift and re-form, moving through angles, emotions, and identities. These metamorphic forms explore the fluidity of gender and spirit, echoing the artist’s ongoing engagement with Two-Spirit histories and lived experiences.

At the center of this dialogue stands We’wha (c. 1849–1896), the renowned Zuni cultural ambassador and Lhamana (Two-Spirit) figure whose life bridged ceremonial knowledge, diplomacy, and the complexities of navigating two worlds. By placing We’wha at the conceptual core of the exhibition, I connect ancestral presence to contemporary questions of identity, survival, and transformation.