ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren: Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren blends critiques of waste culture with "dark beauty" in maximalist installations that speak to 21st-century paranoia.
September 06, 2024
Lynn Trimble
ReviewArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Feminist Theory and a Family Trucking Business Inform Fay Ray’s New Visions of the Borderlands in PORTALS
PORTALS at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona features new works by California-based artist Fay Ray, who imagines radical futures in the Sonoran Desert and Southwest borderlands.
September 06, 2024
At SMoCA, Carolina Aranibar-Fernández Uses Soil, Sequins, and Blood to Explore the Impacts of Global Trade
California-based artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernández explores colonization, extraction, and exploitation in the Southwest in her exhibition Oleaje at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.
July 30, 2024
How International Arts Collective The Place Where Clouds Are Formed is Shifting Borderland Narratives
Artists and poets from Indigenous nation bisected by U.S.-Mexico border join with myriad voices to counter borderland crisis narratives in Tucson.
July 18, 2024
How—and Why—a Contemporary Art Museum in Arizona is Amplifying Mormon History and Theology
New exhibition Materializing Mormonism at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum has ties to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts.
June 24, 2024
Arizona Commission on the Arts Gets a New Director—and a Major Blow to its Budget
Artist Christina You-sun Park becomes executive director of Arizona Commission on the Arts, just as its state funding is slashed by 60%.
June 19, 2024
Work in Progress with Annie Lopez
Phoenix-based artist Annie Lopez's brilliant blue dress forms—tailored from cyanotypes on tamale paper—embody personal, familial, and cultural histories.
May 08, 2024
How a Creative Couple in Arizona is Exploring South Phoenix History Through Photography and Poetry
Photographer Maria Nancy Thomas and poet Rashaad Thomas, a creative couple based in South Phoenix, are using their work to explore a region brimming with the histories of marginalized communities.
April 18, 2024
How Can Mural Artists Take Steps to Protect Their Legal Rights?
Do muralists have a legal right to keep their work from being altered or whitewashed? Experts and artists in the Southwest discuss artist contracts and the Visual Artists Rights Act.
April 11, 2024
Phoenix Artist and Curator Clottee Hammons Highlights Black History, Art, and Culture
Clottee Hammons, the Phoenix artist, curator, and knowledge-keeper who leads Emancipation Arts, has spent decades elevating Black history, arts, and culture while combatting historical and contemporary racism in Arizona.
March 22, 2024
ReviewArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Amalia Mesa-Bains’s Retrospective Mines an Archeology of Memory in Phoenix
Amalia Mesa-Bains, renowned for altar-style installations that helped bring Chicana art into the mainstream, recently had a retrospective exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney: Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney (Diné) draws on personal experience and Navajo, street, and popular culture to create weavings and paintings that defy conventional notions of beauty and Indigenous art.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Jacey Coca: Living Histories
Jacey Coca uses photography and beadwork to explore her own Mexican and Korean heritage as part of an evolving creative practice that examines identity, memory, and nostalgia.
March 01, 2024
Landscape, Body, Identity: Laura Aguilar at Phoenix Art Museum
Landscapes and large bodies featured in the Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona illuminate the artist’s explorations of gender, race, identity, and community.
February 19, 2024
MOCA Tucson is an Incubation Space and “Not Just Arbitrators of Archives”
Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, known as MOCA Tucson, supports regional and local artists through grants, community events, peer connections, and more. Here’s why artists and curators say that matters.
January 30, 2024
How George Floyd Protests Led to a Community-Created Exhibition in Arizona
Twin Flames: The George Floyd Uprising from Minneapolis to Phoenix at ASU Art Museum displays signs, artworks, and other community offerings from George Floyd Square.
January 26, 2024
Antoinette Cauley: I Do It for The Hood, Pt. 2 at Modified Arts
Antoinette Cauley creates expressive portraiture to bridge hyperlocal and global concerns in I Do It For The Hood, Pt. 2 in Phoenix.
January 16, 2024
Lloyd Kiva New Documentary Highlights the Late Designer’s Influence on Indigenous Fashion and Southwest Culture
The story of artist, fashion designer, and Institute of American Indian Arts co-founder Lloyd Kiva New is brought to life in a new documentary by Indigenous filmmaker Nathaniel Fuentes.
December 04, 2023
Southwest Cities Win Millions of Dollars from 2023 Bloomberg Public Art Challenge Awards
Bloomberg Public Art Challenge funding will help Phoenix and Salt Lake City address climate change, and Houston examine homelessness, through temporary public art that engages artists and community members.
November 21, 2023
Recent Allegations at Regional Art Spaces Beg the Question: Can Best Practices Prevent Censorship?
As Southwest art spaces such as Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum deal with art censorship allegations, national art censorship and art law experts weigh in on the broader issue.
November 10, 2023
How Four 2023 Latinx Artist Fellows Are Working in the Southwest–And Where You Can See Their Artwork
The four Southwest-based winners of a 2023 Latinx Artist Fellowship—who each received $50,000 in unrestricted funds—include Margarita Cabrera, Verónica Gaona, Postcommodity, and Daisy Quezada Ureña.
September 12, 2023
Studio VisitArizonaVol. 8 Medium + Support
Estrella Esquilín: Terraforming Identity in the Sonoran Desert
Phoenix-based artist Estrella Esquilín talks about her evolving studio practice, in which community is as important as the construction materials and experimental animation she uses to address identity and place.
September 01, 2023
ReviewArizonaVol. 8 Medium + Support
Reynier Leyva Novo: The Flowers of My Exile
The Flowers of My Exile at Lisa Sette Gallery in Phoenix explores conceptual art by Cuban dissident Reynier Leyva Novo, now an artist in exile in Houston, Texas.
September 01, 2023
Artists Allege Censorship After Exhibitions Postponed at Mesa Contemporary Arts
The City of Mesa brusquely postponed every exhibition on the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum’s fall 2023 calendar. A major free speech organization, a civil rights group, and artists allege censorship.
August 14, 2023
How a Phoenix Mural Project Could Bring Local Latino History to Life
The La Flor Del Pueblo mural project in Phoenix will transform an Arizona Public Service utility substation into a canvas for telling diverse stories of the Grant Park neighborhood.
August 11, 2023
Work in Progress with lydia see
Lydia see, a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator, works with diverse materials in her Tucson studio to explore social justice, foster civic engagement, and broaden access to the arts.
August 09, 2023
Arizona Received Another $5 Million for the Arts. How Will it Get Spent? And When?
Leadership changes at the Arizona Commission on the Arts could impact how the state agency spends the $5 million allocated for arts and culture in Arizona’s 2024 budget.
June 19, 2023
Arizona Biennial 2023 Artists Make Their Mark Beyond the Southwest
Arizona Biennial 2023, a six-month showcase at the Tucson Museum of Art, includes sixty-seven works by fifty-six artists selected by curator Taína Caragol.
June 05, 2023
Arizona Artists Take Umbrage at a Proposed Development in Phoenix’s Already Gentrified Roosevelt Row
Chicago-based tequila and taco restaurant Federales wants to set up shop in downtown Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row. Artists and arts leaders aren’t having it.
May 30, 2023
2023 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico Artists to Know Now
Lynnette Haozous: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023
New Mexico artist Lynnette Haozous (Chiricahua Apache, Diné, Taos Pueblo) combines art and activism with murals that bring representation of Native peoples and cultures into public spaces.
May 26, 2023
