ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Wabwila Mugala: Radical Futures
Phoenix-based designer and interdisciplinary artist Wabwila Mugala uses chitenge fabric to build a unique visual glossary of diasporic symbols.
September 06, 2024
Phoenix
ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Jimmy Fike: Radical Futures
Arizona-based artist Jimmy Fike asks, what will the end of the world like like? His answer is weird—and weirdly hopeful.
September 06, 2024
FeatureArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
The Ants of Biosphere 2
Seeking fresh hope in the 20th-century futurisms of Arizona architectural marvels Biosphere 2, Taliesin West, and Arcosanti.
September 06, 2024
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Southwest Contemporary Gift Guide 2023
Seeking tips on artist-made gifts? Are you trying to find Southwest-inspired stocking stuffers? Want to shop locally and support area artists and artisans? Read the Southwest Contemporary Gift Guide 2023!
December 05, 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
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
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
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
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
People from MARS: The History of Movimiento Artistico del Rio Salado, a Phoenix-Based Chicano Artist Collective
Movimiento Artistico del Rio Salado, or MARS, a Phoenix-based artist collective, became an inclusive home for Chicano and Indigenous artists starting in the 1970s.
June 09, 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
Work in Progress with Patricia Sannit
Patricia Sannit, in this deeply personal visit to her Phoenix studio, reflects on the ways loss, vulnerable ecologies, and recent residencies in Iceland and Sweden are shifting her practice.
January 24, 2023
How High-Profile Southwest Museums Prioritize Local Artists
Several art museums in the Southwest region are highlighting local artists in creative ways, countering the tendency to associate major museums with monumental exhibitions of world-renowned artists.
December 07, 2022
Artists Speak About the Impacts of Rampant Development in Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row
Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row arts district is different (read: more corporate) these days. How are all of the speedy commercial and residential developments impacting local artists?
November 22, 2022
Downtown Phoenix Art Existed Before Roosevelt Row. Just Ask Pete Petrisko.
Pete Petrisko has spent decades participating in and documenting the downtown Phoenix arts scene, which has morphed from the grit of Metropophobobia and Gallery X to a place for brewpub-hopping.
November 15, 2022
Stephen Marc Explores the American Psyche Amid Midterm Elections
As midterm elections loom, Stephen Marc, an Arizona-based photographer and Guggenheim fellow, explores what protests reveal about the American psyche in An American Journey Continues.
November 04, 2022
Pete Petrisko: 35 Years Onward at Lost Leaf Counterpunches at In-Flux Phoenix
Pete Petrisko, one of the few remaining old heads in the local art scene who has lived in downtown Phoenix since the 1980s, exhibits selections from the past thirty-five years.
October 28, 2022
