In Nadine Robinson's latest site-specific commission, Tri-Christus, three crosses studded with marquee lights serve as the signpost for SITE Santa Fe's seventh biennial. Robinson is best known for her large-scale sculptures and sound projects, such as Tower Hollers, which wired 12 record players simultaneously distributing slave songs and kitschy "music for dining" through 455 wall-mounted speakers. The massive installation referenced the maintenance workers at the World Trade Center, where Robinson was an artist-in-residence in 1999, and was exhibited in the 2002 group show Tempo at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Robinson's 2006 solo project alles grau in grau malen ("to paint everything grey") brought an apocalyptic chorus to the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she was also an artist-in-residence. Eerie sound bites of Hollywood films, Catholic funerary chants, and Jamaican dub music played concurrently, creating a multisensory sound painting.

For this British-born, Bronx-based artist of Jamaican descent, the symbol of the cross is rich with meaning. In Tri-Christus, the XXX icon — appropriate for Santa Fe, the City of Holy Faith — references the Spanish colonization of the Pueblo people, but also evokes pornography, booze, and Constantine the Great. The installation's brilliance resides in its ability to build this shared space of discovery and discussion.

Robinson brings to her work for SITE a certain minimalist grandeur, while addressing postmodern concerns about language, the body, and cross-cultural discourse. Her unconventional yet everyday materials — speakers, light bulbs, rhinestones, and record players — speak to the social phenomena of religion, race, and sexuality in both an art historical and popular register.

-Thomas Lax