An Artist Who is Hatching a Hyperpop Universe from Her Phoenix Studio
Internet burnout, vulnerability, kinetic egg sculptures. Royal Young visits the studio of interdisciplinary artistic entity Lady Egg.
September 17, 2026
Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Guide to Alien Encounters
For nearly four decades, Guillermo Gómez-Peña has revisited alien iconography. Graciela Blandon grapples with his new AI project, and what his little green men teach us about facing the unfamiliar.
September 04, 2026
Field ReportTexasVol. 14 Alien
Field Report: Lubbock
Located on the high plains of West Texas, Lubbock is a creative hotbed in the middle of the cotton fields, with a vibrant art scene that draws big crowds to downtown and devotees to the fringes.
September 04, 2026
Tableland Vertigo: Surveying Circles of the Llano Estacado
Crop circles on the High Plains? Julian Francolino meditates on questions of alienness and human intervention in agriculture and art in Eastern New Mexico and West Texas.
September 04, 2026
InterviewNew MexicoVol. 14 Alien
MadVan Universe: an interview with Madison Van Der Lingen
Madison Van Der Lingen, an Albuquerque-based fashion designer balancing sustainability and maximalism, comments on the importance of being earnest, even while transcending worlds.
September 04, 2026
Hilma’s Ghost Calls Viewers Into Their Circle of Activist Resistance
"We turn backward to move forward," explains the collective Hilma’s Ghost. Their work challenges erasure in the art historical canon and foregrounds female, queer, and trans artists.
September 04, 2026
To be alien: Guest Juror Leslie Moody Castro
Leslie Moody Castro reflects on the slippery definition of "alien" through the artists featured in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 14: ALIEN.
September 04, 2026
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 14 Alien
Alien: Hayley Krichels
Hayley Krichels cuts up the hair, skin, and fingers of her human suit to imagine a new humanity of fragments.
September 04, 2026
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 14 Alien
Alien: Adrian Pijoan
Adrian Pijoan explores Bigfoot, UFOs, and paranormal belief, framing the supernatural as a social practice.
September 04, 2026
Alien: Kevin Sloan
Kevin Sloan’s paintings of endangered species set against surreal, Edenic backdrops, remind the viewer how much beauty we have left to lose.
September 04, 2026
Fifty Years On and With Last Living Member Present, Flagstaff Exhibition Reunites Works by This Hopi Artist Collective
With Artist Hopid Unveiled, the Museum of Northern Arizona celebrates the shared cultural voice of the groundbreaking Indigenous artist collective founded in the 1970s.
August 25, 2026
Witchcraft, Esoterica, and the Queer Resistance—A Queer Arcana Uncovers the Links
Esotericism and activism collide in A Queer Arcana, a wide-ranging exhibition of art and ephemera from the LGBTQ+ underground, part of the Palm Springs Art Museum's Q+ Art Initiative.
August 20, 2026
These Amazing Art Cars of Arizona Are a True Form of Public Art
Massive mutant vehicles, novelty art cars, and custom lowriders—meet some of the makers devoted to this elaborate and often underappreciated art form.
August 06, 2026
Mary Ellen Carroll’s Power Plays and Trickster Antics Are All That (And a Bag of Chips)
From flipping houses to crashing cars, How To Talk Dirty and Influence People presents a forty-year survey of playful and provocative artworks by Mary Ellen Carroll.
July 23, 2026
Editor’s Picks: Southwest Contemporary’s Summer 2026 Exhibition Guide
As the nation marks 250 years this July, SWC arts editor Natalie Hegert picks thirty-two exhibitions that offer an antidote to the flag-waving displays of patriotism.
June 29, 2026
What Can We Learn From Artists Using Data As Material, Before the AI Age?
Run the Code explores technological obsolescence, interactivity, and the limits of software as an artmaking tool, revealing a data-driven approach to conceptual art.
June 18, 2026
Field Report2026 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
Field Report: Gallup, New Mexico
New Mexico’s “Carbon City” celebrates Native arts and traditions, vibrant galleries, and public art, carving its own path beneath the tourist economy’s glare.
May 22, 2026
From the Editor2026 New Mexico Field Guide
From the Editors: New Mexico Field Guide 2026-27
This edition of the New Mexico Field Guide is an invitation to take in a dynamic year of New Mexico arts programming—and then experience it in motion.
May 22, 2026
Feature2026 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
Meow Wolf Opened the House of Eternal Return 10 Years Ago, and Has Been Expanding Ever Since
Meow Wolf’s first interactive installation celebrates its tenth anniversary, marking an era of staggering growth and expansion, with even more to come.
May 22, 2026
Looking Into the Time Horizon, There’s Doom and Gloom… But Also Hope
Into the Time Horizon, the largest exhibition ever mounted at the Nevada Museum of Art, addresses the accelerating climate crisis and ways we might combat it.
May 19, 2026
Big Art, Hidden Vault, and More Tales from a Storied Strip of New Mexico Highway
From movie scenes to Scientology symbols, Jon Revett reflects on thirty-five years of traveling on the Conchas Highway, in a landscape of shifting cultural narratives.
May 08, 2026
Sable Elyse Smith Unwinds the Clock on Race, Power, and the Carceral Machine
With disarming, familiar objects like coloring books and furniture, Sable Elyse Smith’s Clockwork at The Contemporary Austin exposes how race and the carceral system shape identity.
May 05, 2026
César Chávez Allegations Trigger Artwork Removals—and Concerns of Cultural Erasure
Before a recent fall from grace, Chávez was a rare Latino hero in Southwest public art. Now, arts leaders are asking how to de-center an icon without obscuring entire histories.
April 30, 2026
What Do You Get When Two Cows and a Conceptual Art Icon Walk Into a Tucson Gallery?
Clever conceit or curatorial cop-out? In Cassidy Araiza / Robert Barry / Jocko Weyland, experiment and open-endedness might be the objective.
April 21, 2026
Can International Art Star Olafur Eliasson Provoke Urgency to Restore Great Salt Lake?
After decades of decline and political inaction at Great Salt Lake, Olafur Eliasson flies in with a temporary public art project. Can this art-world Hail Mary provoke positive change?
April 16, 2026
The Context of Humanness: Yes &… at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Wants Proof of Life
Yes &..., curated by Tobias Fike and Donald Fodness, advocates for human ingenuity in the face of AI ascendance. But is that a sufficient curatorial framework?
April 02, 2026
The Office of Collecting and Design Leaves Las Vegas to Become a Roving Museum
Founder of the Office of Collecting and Design Jessica Oreck talks about the museum’s move into a trailer, her collecting origins, and how she meets her community on the road.
March 31, 2026
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Evidence, Epistle, and the Evolutionary: A Response to the Works of Johannes Barfield
Poet Laura Neal discovers new roads in the collected works of Albuquerque-based artist Johannes Barfield exploring alternative states of being and imagining in Black culture.
March 20, 2026
Arrows on the Quanah Parker Trail
The “largest art installation in the world” covers the land in Texas once shared by bison, Comanche, and their horses. As a memorial, it represents but does little to repair.
March 20, 2026
Field ReportColoradoTravelVol. 13 The Road
Field Report: Colorado Springs
Colorado’s “second city” has a rich and historic art scene, often overshadowed by the city’s contemporary connections to sports, tech, and the military.
March 20, 2026
