School of Art Assistant Professor Nicole Antebi, whose cross-cultural work centers on animation as a form of community-engaged storytelling, has been named a 2025 Early Career Scholar Award recipient by the University of Arizona.

Antebi, a member of the school’s Illustration, Design and Animation (IDA) program, joins three other U of A assistant professors being honored. The award recognizes outstanding early career faculty who are at the forefront of their disciplines and make valued contributions to the teaching, creative activity and service priorities.

“I see this award as a validation of the work I’ve done to reframe animation as a critical tool of inquiry and connection and the potential of animation to visualize what is unseen,” Antebi said. “I frequently talk about the way in which individuals, working in community, can make change in a more impactful way in the same way individual frames work together to form an animated sequence or a complete action.”

She is quick to credit her students, including her fall 2024 class that produced an animated feature about Eveli Sabatie, an acclaimed jeweler now based in Tucson who was mentored by Native American artist Charles Loloma. Arizona Public Media will profile her students in a May 18 segment, “Eveli, A Jeweler, A Dreamer,” on PBS channel 6 at 6:30 p.m.

Antebi is co-director of the Wonder Studio at Biosphere 2, which serves as an animation, data visualization and film production laboratory dedicated to developing solutions for environmental change. Her collaboration with Aaron Bugaj, senior research technologist at Biosphere 2, has provided numerous opportunities for Antebi’s students — including class projects, internships, residencies and freelance jobs. The studio is the culmination of four years of seed funding and collaboration between Antebi and Bugaj.

“Nicole is an amazing teacher who encourages her students to build better communities through storytelling, animation and collaboration,” said Professor Kelly Leslie, who chairs the School of Art’s Illustration, Design and Animation program.

An affiliated faculty member of Latin American Studies, Antebi grew up in the borderlands of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad, Juárez. In the years since she graduated from high school in 1993, following the signing of NAFTA, she watched the two cities become increasingly dissected by federal political, social, economic and environmental policies designed to obstruct the movement of people, culture and the river.

She earned her BFA from the University of Texas at El Paso and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Antebi taught at CUNY Queens College, SUNY Albany, and in 2019 she was a visiting professor at la Universidad de las Américas, Puebla.

In 2020, she began teaching an online beginning animation class at the U of A during Covid as an adjunct instructor. She also applied for a full-time position that same year and was hired in 2021 on a tenure track as the school was changing its program name from “Illustration and Design” to “Illustration, Design and Animation,” requiring students to understand the time, sequence and storytelling that animation explores.

“Nicole has supported our program’s evolution with her offerings of beginning and advanced animation courses and contributed to its growth,” Leslie said. “Students from IDA and Design Arts Practice (DAP) and art minors clamor to take her classes. Her students are making a significant impact in the community using what they are learning and taking advantage of the opportunities for collaboration she presents to her students.”

Antebi’s collaboration with the “Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project,” for instance, had a profound impact on her students, outgoing School of Director Colin Blakely said in a nomination letter signed along with others.

“Students learned of the many challenges and dangers immigrants face in their home countries and the U.S.,” he said. The students created illustrations of these stories which were then used in the “Florence Project” newsletters, social media posts and website, creating empathy and connecting readers to the non-profit organization’s members. The illustrations are now also part of the “Ford Foundation Border Narratives” archive in The University of Arizona Special Collections. The project resulted in additional freelance opportunities for three of Antebi’s students.

“Nicole is committed to sharing the importance of empathy and community building to elevate the stories of our region and the people who live here. To date, through community engagement and experiential learning, she has served more than 90 undergraduate students in arts research and science communication projects,” Blakely said in the nomination letter.

Antebi coordinated a meeting between “Amal,” a 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl and an international symbol of human rights and “Esperanza,” a 12-foot cardboard puppet created by students Esperanza D’Gloria Ries, Olivia Cabelli and Truman Adams. This event and interaction with Amal during her visit to campus and the border region brought attention on the urgent needs of refugees and highlighted the rich cultures that immigrants bring to the U.S.

As a Diana Liverman Scholars mentor, Antebi presented “Science in Motion,” a talk to Liverman Scholars, at a retreat at Biosphere 2. She also coordinated a collaboration between the Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing, an award- winning documentary filmmaker Lisa Molomot, and three of her advanced animation students to work on the educational film Semiconductor USA (2024).

Antebi facilitated “Ingrained,” an animated film collaboration with Flowers & Bullets Community Garden in Tucson. Her Animation 1 students worked in the garden to build community and learn how to cultivate corn as the basis for their short, fully animated documentary. She also held animation workshops for the gardeners in order for them to contribute to the film. The film premiered at the 2022 “What’s Up Docs?” at the Loft Cinema and was subsequently screened at The UA Wonder House at the 2023 Southwest by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and at the university’s 2023 TEDx event.

Antebi remains active as a creator and animator herself, showing her creative work in over 20 exhibitions and screenings since 2022, including the Oaxaca Film Festival, in Mexico, the 26^th annual AntiMatter in Victoria, BC, Canada; The Border Biennial at the Museo de Artes de Ciudad in Juarez, Mexico; Cinetoro Experimental Film Festival, Toro Valle del Cauca, Colombia; and her work has recently been acquired by The El Paso Museum of Art’s permanent collection. In 2023 she received a prestigious Anthem Award for her animated “Covid Explainer Series,” a collaboration with The American Museum of Natural History and the City of New York.

In 2024, Antebi wrote and illustrated an article for The Texas Observer, “Reclaiming Friendships Across Borders,” and was interviewed for the Growth Podcast in Berlin, Germany. Also in 2024, she presented “Vecinas” with collaborator Ingrid Leyva at the INVERSE Performance Festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, commissioned by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary, an extension of the museum for exploring contemporary art and experiences.

In April 2025, Antebi presented her animation work in Video Art Night in downtown Dallas. She also produced animated sequences for “Ternura Radical,” a short documentary about the rise in activism around gender violence in Juárez, Mexico, with director Celina Galicia and funded by Femme Fronterain El Paso, Texas.

Antebi’s work “100 Partially Obscure Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas 2015-2023” was acquired by the El Paso Museum of Art’s permanent collection, and was included in the official selection 20 Festival Transterritorial de Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the 2023 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art.

She also was the Principal Investigator for “STITCHING IDENTITIES: Rarámuri Dressmaking and Resistance in Chihuahua City,” an archive based on Victoria Blanco‘s book, “Out of the Sierra.” The book was published by Coffee House Press in collaboration with siríame or governor of El Oasis, Amalia Holguin, and London-based filmmaker Irene Baqué. It was funded by a Digital Borderlands, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant through Special Collections at The University of Arizona Library. As part of the project, she conducted workshops in animation with community members so that they could serve as collaborators and co-authors.

“Nicole will continue to foster cross-border collaborations in her research, service and teaching, and will continue to receive accolades as a stellar teacher, ingenious and gifted artist, and an engaged community builder,” Leslie said.

In addition to Antebi, other University of Arizona assistant professors receiving the Early Scholar Award are Kerri Rodriguez, College of Veterinary Medicine; Melanie McKay-Cody, Disability and Psychoeducational Studies, College of Education; and Elizabeth (Beth) Tellman, School of Geography, Development and Environment.  

• 2025 University of Arizona Distinguished Faculty Awards
• Nicole Antebi’s website: https://nicoleantebi.net/
• Instagram: @nicoleantebi