Every Artwork is a Cat-and-Mouse Thriller in this Phoenix Exhibition of Eastern Bloc Artists
Even the propaganda is sabotaged in Multiple Realities, a Soviet spy novel of an exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum.
August 06, 2024
Arizona
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
Feral with Possibility: Harry Fonseca’s Queer Coyote Takes Center Stage in Small but Resonant Exhibition at the Heard
In the first exhibition to explore Harry Fonseca’s expressions of “queerness” through his beloved character Coyote, queer-Indigenous performativity takes center stage.
July 16, 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
Journey to the Origin of Images: New Book on Aby Warburg’s 1890s Trek to the Southwest Gives New Insights
A new book from Hatje Cantz, The Snake and the Lightning: Aby Warburg's American Journey, enlivens the German art historian's trek to the Southwest in 1895-96.
June 14, 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
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
