The 2026 Arizona Biennial features six artists with University of Arizona School of Art ties, including MFA student Sheldon Patten and Professor Sama Alshaibi from the school’s acclaimed Photography, Video & Imaging program.
Joining them among the 31 artists chosen are School of Art alums Claire Fall Blanchette (MFA ’25), Eli Burke (PhD ’25), Mary Meyer (MFA ’05) and Anh-Thuy Nguyen (BFA ’10).
The 39th Biennial, the longest-running statewide juried exhibition in Arizona, runs from May through September 2026 at the Tucson Museum of Art — juried by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, executive director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley.
“Serving as a juror for the Arizona Biennial was a genuinely exciting opportunity to take in the creative breadth across the state and deepen my sense of what’s happening in the Southwest,” Rodrigues Widholm said.
Meet the six SOA-related artists and their Biennial work (photos courtesy of the artists):
Sheldon Patten
“Clothesline Randolph, AZ”
“Cotton Fields Randolph, AZ”
“SRP Randolph, AZ”
All inkjet print on premium matte cotton paper, 2025
Artist statement: I create visual documentary work that examines identity, representation and structural inequality. Centered in Randolph, Arizona, this project investigates environmental racism and socioeconomic disinvestment affecting one of the state’s oldest historically Black communities. Established through Arizona’s cotton industry, Randolph was later annexed by the surrounding city of Coolidge and encircled by industrial development and hazardous infrastructure. The work considers how vulnerability and endurance coexist within systems of inequity, centering intimate human experience to reveal the beauty and continuity of collective resilience. I document how land, memory, and belonging endure despite displacement and political marginalization.
Bio: Patten is a lens-based artist from Toronto entering his second year of the MFA program at the School of Art. Using portraiture and visual documentary, he represents the impacts of displacement, environmental harm and resource scarcity imposed on historically Black and Caribbean communities. His earlier work — “Like a Rose”— examines the intimate bond between the artist and their mother as they navigate her living with Parkinson’s disease, tracing caregiving, loss of autonomy and the transformation of identity confronted by neurodegenerative illness.
Instagram and website: @sheldon_patten and sheldonpatten.com
Sama Alshaibi
“Tabula Rasa”
Mixed media collage, 2026
Artist statement: “My practice emerges from aftermath, where fragmentation is the material condition of political conflict and forced migration. I explore Iraq’s built environments and the systems that imagined them. Baghdad is not only a place, but a living archive shaped by developmental ambition and political interruption. Using fieldwork, archival materials, and on-site imaging, I trace how modernization was spatialized and then stalled, and how its residue remains legible in form. Through LiDAR scanning, photography and video, I render Baghdad as a palimpsest. Return—grounded in my position as both exiled and returnee—exposes the misalignment between memory, form, and experience.”
Bio: Born in Iraq to a Palestinian mother and Iraqi father, and now a naturalized US citizen, Alshaibi is a Regents Professor of Art and Chair of the Photography, Video and Imaging program at the School of Art. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the 55th Venice Biennale, the 13th Cairo International Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (State of the Art 2020), and the Barjeel Foundation (UAE). Aperture Foundation published her monograph, Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In, in 2015. Alshaibi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography (2021), the Art Matters Betty Parsons Fellowship (2023), the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Visual Arts Award (2017), and residencies at MacDowell (2025), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (2024), and Artpace (2019).
Instagram and website: @sama_alshaibi and samaalshaibi.com
Claire Fall Blanchette
“Tangled Currents”
Reishi mycelium, hemp hurd, hardwood shavings, clay, cardboard, paper, xanthan gum, and steel (2025)
“Reclamare”
Screen print and reishi spores on Rives BFK (2025)
Artist statement: “Tangled Currents” uses eight historic landfills along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson as a framework to examine the sustained consequences of human activity on a local ecosystem. Each sculpture represents one of these sites and offers a speculative solution for their remediation. The work is created with reishi mycelium. Mycelial networks can clean toxins from soil and water through the process of myco-remediation and form reciprocal relationships with other organisms that increase their collective chance of survival. “Tangled Currents” presents an alternative to human-centered ways of thinking by examining natural processes for guidance in developing a mutually beneficial world.
Bio: Blanchette is an artist working across multiple disciplines including sculpture, printmaking and drawing. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in Tucson and a BFA in Printmaking and History of Art from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Recently, she was an artist-in-residence in the Expressive Arts Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico, where she had a solo show, “Ground Truthing,” at the Francis McCray Gallery. Using organic and unconventional materials, she investigates the boundaries that humans have established between the built world and the environment. Blanchette is the recipient of the Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize (University of Arizona), Helen Gross Award (University of Arizona), Reba Stewart – Genevieve McMillan Travel Fellowship (Massachusetts College of Art and Design). She also was an artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artist Program (CA), The Land With No Name (AZ), and Konstepidemin Arts Center (Gothenburg, Sweden). She has shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions.
Instagram and website: @clr_fall and cfblanchette.com
Eli Burke
“The Opening”
Photograph printed on coroplast, 2024
Artist statement: Artists and cousins Eli and Jesse Burke weave a visual narrative that intertwines identity, nature, and transformation through collaborative photography. Their work-in-progress explores themes of trans identity, masculinity, and embodiment, while examining the interplay between the human experience and the natural world. The Burkes’ photographs reflect a profound connection between the shifting landscapes and the fluidity of the trans body. The ever-changing desert, with its resilient flora and vast skies, mirrors the process of transformation within the body, particularly the trans body, reflecting both its vulnerabilities and strength as it undergoes constant redefinition.
Bio: Burke is an interdisciplinary artist working across drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and installation, exploring themes of loss, identity, queer embodiment, magic, empathy, and vulnerability. Burke earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in Art and Visual Culture Education from the University of Arizona School of Art.
Instagram and website: @iheartfeelings and eliburke.com
Mary Meyer
“The Leaf Connection”
Hand-carved ceramic leaves and pins, 2024-25
Artist statement: My sculptural practice examines the relationship between humans and the botanical world, grounded in Arizona’s ecology and shaped by biophilia—the innate human affinity for living systems. Working with clay, wood, and found objects, I focus on tactile experiences to explore cycles of growth, adaptation, and resilience shared by bodies and plants. “The Leaf Connection” extends this inquiry through hand-carved ceramic leaves inspired by community-sourced observations of local flora, highlighting citizen science and our shared responsibility for urban biodiversity. Through these works, I create contemplative spaces where material presence, embodied encounter, and desert environment intersect to deepen connection to place.
Bio: Meyer is a sculptor whose work investigates the relationship between the human form and the natural environment. Originally trained in stone carving, she is drawn to meditative processes and materials such as clay, wood, and metal that foster the intuitive exploration of form. Meyer grew up in the Midwest and has lived in Arizona for 30 years. She holds a BFA in sculpture from Arizona State University, where she studied foundry casting methods and metalworking. She completed her graduate studies at the University of Arizona, where she received the MFA Fellowship for her work with large mixed media installations. The artist, who has exhibited throughout Arizona and Royal Caribbean International, has served as an adjunct professor teaching sculpture at Arizona State University, Scottsdale Community College and Chandler-Gilbert Community College.
Instagram and website: @marymeyerstudio and marymeyerstudio.com
Anh-Thuy Nguyen
“Rice is Me”
2-separate-channel video with sound, 2025
Artist statement: The works I submitted here are drawn from the multi-disciplinary project “Rice is Mẹ” (Mẹ is Mother in Vietnamese). Through the powerful symbol of rice, I embark on a journey to reconnect with my roots, family, and traditions, while navigating the complexities of cultural assimilation. I blend my primary approaches (photography, video) with ceramics, sculpture and poetry in this new work to express my complex emotions of loss, hope and resilience. At the heart of the “Rice is Mẹ” project, I intended to reclaim rice as my artistic medium by combining Vietnamese and American clay to sculpt each grain of rice.
Bio: Nguyen live and works in Tucson, where she is head of the Visual Arts Department at Pima Community College. She received her MFA in Photography/Video from Southern Methodist University, a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona; and a BA in Economic Geography from the University of Social Sciences & Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. As a Vietnamese-American artist, she investigates her cultural and identity as well as her migration story through photography, video, installation and performance art. She has received grants and fellowships from the Arizona Commissions for the Arts, Art Foundations for Tucson and Southern Arizona, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, and the Oklahoma Center for Humanities. Recently. She was awarded the 2023 Second Sight award from Medium Photo, and her work work is in the permanent collections of Amarillo Museum of Art, Tucson Museum of Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock among others.
Instagram and website: @anh_thuynguyen and anh-thuynguyen.com
Other Biennial artists
- Michael Afsa
- Maria Ruth Aragon De la Fuente
- Scott Baxter
- Brass Tuna
- Cherie Buck-Hutchison
- Manny Burruel
- Ashley Czajkowski
- Hoge Day
- Rafael Angel Diaz
- Mikey Estes
- Nathan Garcia
- Lex Gjurasic
- Maura Grogan
- Kate Hoover
- Adia Jamille
