Originally from Mexico City, Elizabeth Pineda raised her family in Phoenix and Surprise, Arizona. Pineda has been a photographer throughout her life, but she received her degrees after raising her children. Her artwork explores the increasingly complicated issues of immigration, identity, and displacement, and she sees herself as speaking visually about her community and their shared experiences. To do this she uses historic and nontraditional photographic processes, printmaking, bookmaking, and papermaking. Three recent works from the Sin Nombre en Esta Tierra Sagrada (No Name in this Sacred Land) series include a lose leaf book, hand typed on handmade corn-husk paper, in a clam shell box; a set of painstakingly printed, monumental silk scrolls; and a video performance in our Arizona landscape. All three honor and recognize the 4,400+ migrants who have lost their lives in the Arizona desert. Her text is the names of the deceased from Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and Humane Borders’ Migrant Death Mapping document. If no name is available on the document, Pineda types or says “sin nombre”; its frequency is distressing. The labor-intensive nature of the objects is important to her--and our--emotional engagement. Pineda is the recipient of a 2024 Arizona Artist Award from the Phoenix Art Museum and her work is currently on display in the accompanying exhibition.  

Website: ElizabethZPineda.com