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
Arizona
Selling the Southwest Unpacks the Colonialist Mythology and Marketing of the Santa Fe Railroad
This Museum of Northern Arizona exhibition unpacks how the marketing efforts of the Santa Fe Railroad and Fred Harvey Company romanticized and exploited the artistry and culture of Indigenous people.
May 02, 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
Francisco González Castro’s Durational Art Investigates, Illuminates, and Confronts Hegemonic Societal and Power Structures
Francisco González Castro: Does Not Say «I», But Does «I»: Bodies, Limits and Transgressions at the Coconino Center compiles a decade of the artist’s endurance work challenging social structures.
April 08, 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
An Essential Retrospective of Hopi Artist Duwawisioma at Tucson’s Andrew Smith Gallery
Duwawisioma’s (Victor Masayesva Jr.) retrospective exhibition Màatakuyma at Andrew Smith Gallery in Tucson solidifies the Hopi artist’s importance in contemporary photographic and Indigenous artistic discourse.
March 05, 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
Chip Thomas: Living Histories
Medical doctor, photographer, and public artist Chip Thomas has taken a historical turn in his work, building on deep, place-based research and activating architecture with archival discoveries.
March 01, 2024
FeatureArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
The Tanning-Ernst Effect: Is Sedona Poised for a Surrealist Renaissance?
Sedona was once a Surrealism outpost in the desert, where resident artists Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning made work at their home, Capricorn Hill.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Jisun Myung: Living Histories
Jisun Myung blurs the lines between survival and growth through food-based art, cultivating community and connection.
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
The Tucson Art Scene Impresses with its People Power
Tucson, Arizona is home to an incredible community of creative people. Southwest Contemporary visited in November 2023 to discover the local art scene.
February 16, 2024
Work in Progress with Perla Segovia
Perla Segovia, a Peruvian immigrant who has made Tucson her home for the past ten years, advocates for the value of immigrants through textile, embroidery, glass, and painting techniques.
February 13, 2024
BLAC Empowerment: New Tucson Gallery Bolsters Black Artists
Blue Lotus Artists’ Collective, or BLAC, is a new Tucson gallery—and perhaps the first of its kind—dedicated to elevating local, national, and international Black artists.
February 06, 2024
Snakebite Creation Space: An Artist-Run Haven for Experimental Exhibitions
Snakebite Creation Space’s Geneva Foster Gluck and Racheal Rios invite artists to install exhibitions that push their practices in new directions while challenging the constraints of a typical gallery show.
February 02, 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
Tucson Museum of Art’s Centennial Celebration Unveils Temporal Tapestry in Time Travelers
Time Travelers: Foundations, Transformations, and Expansions at the Centennial reconsiders the complex relationships of select artworks in relation to the past, present, and future. On view at the Tucson Museum of Art March 17–October 6, 2024.
January 16, 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
How Beatrice Moore and Tony Zahn Unintentionally Founded the Grand Avenue Arts District
Artists and preservationists Beatrice Moore and Tony Zahn recall how they established Phoenix’s Grand Avenue arts district despite wanting to do the opposite.
January 12, 2024
Appropriation in the Arts Series Dissects Thievery of Indigenous Art and Culture
The Appropriation in the Arts series of panel discussions at the Museum of Northern Arizona and Sedona Arts Center tackles topics ranging from mass-produced costume Navajo jewelry to spiritual colonialism.
December 08, 2023
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
Crafting Resistance Slays the Binaries Separating Art and Craft
Curated by Erin Joyce, the small-scale exhibition at ASU Art Museum posits big questions about art and craft, resistance and identity.
November 17, 2023
Amy Ernst, Granddaughter of Max Ernst, Extends Family Art Legacy with Surrealist Collage
Amy Ernst, who "tried to run away" from her art-making family legacy, which includes Philipp, Max, and Jimmy Ernst, showcases abstract surrealist collages at Sedona City Hall.
September 29, 2023
ArtistsArizonaVol. 8 Medium + Support
alejandro t. acierto
Phoenix-based artist alejandro t. acierto's work explores the nodes of digital culture, neoimperialism, genealogies of image-making practices, and the de- and re-contextualization of Indigenous cultural artifacts.
September 01, 2023
ArtistsArizonaVol. 8 Medium + Support
Safwat Saleem
Born in Pakistan and residing in Phoenix, Safwat Saleem’s multidisciplinary art explores the experience of being an immigrant father with equal measures of joy, sorrow, and resistance.
September 01, 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
PhotographyArizonaVol. 8 Medium + Support
Claire A. Warden: Finding Photography’s Edge
Phoenix-based artist Claire A. Warden experiments with camera-less processes to push against the boundaries of photography and identity.
September 01, 2023
