Safwat Saleem: The Unrequited Love Institute
The recipient of the 2024 Scult Family Artist Award is Safwat Saleem. Saleem is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice ranges from graphic design and illustration to writing, film, and sound. His body of work centers on immigrant narratives and the cultural loss through assimilation, weaving together themes of preservation, the longing to belong, resistance, and the quiet joy of parenthood. Humor, especially satire, plays a key role in his work, helping him make sense of the tensions within identity and belonging.
In Saleem’s first solo exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum, Safwat Saleem: The Unrequited Love Institute (T.U.L.I.) brings together works from across Saleem’s career in a single site-specific, immersive satirical installation. Informed by the historical practice of conceptual art, T.U.L.I. invites visitors to engage with objects and systems that shape immigrant belonging, such as a number kiosk, orientation video, and immigrant clock, which are seen as tools designed to ensure that “every individual is recalibrated for seamless integration” through “behavioral correction, narrative alignment, and identity optimization” methods.
(Above): Omar Soto, The Birth of Venus, 2023. Digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist. (Header): Safwat Saleem, 22 Words (video still), 2023. Video. Courtesy of the artist
Saleem has been named a TED Fellow, a Define American Fellow, and an AAPI Creative Catalyst Fellow. He believes in using art for social impact and has collaborated with change-making organizations including Represent Us Now (RUN) AAPI, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), 18 Million Rising, and Fine Acts. He is the founder of the former online Pakistani music magazine Bandbaja, which advocated for using popular music as a tool for activism and change.
About the Scult Family Artist Award
The Scult Family Artist Award recognizes a mid-career Arizona artist. Each year, the recipient is chosen from a pool of candidates based on a number of criteria. Eligible candidates are artists who demonstrate artistic excellence through their work, are presently making and exhibiting new work, have demonstrated significant growth in their work over their careers, and have been residents of Arizona for a minimum of four consecutive years. The recipient is then selected based on the work they are currently producing in addition to pieces they have created in the past. The award includes a $20,000 prize, a solo exhibition at the Museum, and a lifetime PhxArt Membership. The panel of jurors included 2023 Scult Award recipient Jenea Sanchez, Communications Director at the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona; Andrea Alvarez, Associate Curator at Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Alexis Wilkinson, Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Tucson; and Morton Scult.
The 2024 Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards Exhibition
The 2024 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards Exhibition features works by emerging artists Elizabeth Z. Pineda and Omar Soto.
Elizabeth Z. Pineda
Originally from Mexico City, Elizabeth Z. Pineda is an emerging artist whose practice using historical and untraditional photographic, printmaking, papermaking, and book-art processes explores issues surrounding immigration, identity, displacement, and migrant deaths that occur in the Arizona desert. Pineda visually articulates community, touching on language barriers, culture, and society. Her featured works in the 2024 Arizona Artist Awards Exhibition center on the migrant experience and draw from the Arizona landscape in various ways, exploring issues of home and belonging, identity, displacement, erasure, and the tragedy of human loss in the terrain.
Her work has been showcased in solo and group exhibitions nationally, and has been published in PhoenixTransect.org, Femme Fotale, Vol. V: Resistance, Resilience, and Hope, and The Experimental Darkroom: Contemporary Uses of Black & White Photographic Materials. In 2023 she was awarded the Pat Mutterer Award at the Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art, as well as first prize and honorable mention in the 18th, 20th, and 22nd Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. Pineda’s portfolio was recognized for Outstanding Work in the 2022 Denis Roussel Award, and her project Maíz was selected as the CENTER 2023 Personal Award recipient and the inaugural recipient of the Jay and Susie Tyrrell Excellence in Works By Hand Award. Pineda holds an MFA in Photography from Arizona State University and is a member of Undoc + Collective. In addition to her studio practice, she teaches photography as a faculty associate at Arizona State University and works in Library Information Services at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine.
Image credit: Elizabeth Z. Pineda, Reverencia: Arizona Migrant Death Mapping (detail), 2022. Archival pigment on Habotal Silk, 10 panels. Courtesy of the artist
Omar Soto
Omar Soto (they/them) is a DACAmented photographer whose surreal imagery explores queer joy and escapism to navigate the marginalization they endure while living at the intersection of race, gender, and social class. Born in Tijuana in 1996, Soto migrated to the United States in 2000. With a passion for the arts, they studied at South Mountain High School under the institution’s magnet photography program, learning fundamental photography skills while enriching their artistic practice. For their featured series, Mediums of Hope, Soto worked with a team of costume designers, makeup and nail artists, hair and clothing stylists, jewelry artists, painters, fabricators, and models to create intricate, staged photographic scenes that mimic or draw inspiration from well-known art historical works, such as Sandro Botticelli’s (1445-1510) The Birth of Venus. Their images draw from iconography related to QTBIPOC (Queer and Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities, as well as music, film, art, and religious expression commonly associated with Mexican and Latinx culture. These works create dialogue between the classical and the contemporary and challenge the art historical canon by centering queer people, trans people, and people of color. As part of the Lehmann Artist Awards program, Soto and Pineda will present work in a group exhibition scheduled to open at Phoenix Art Museum in the summer of 2025.
Image credit: Omar Soto, Queen of Angels, 2023. Digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist
About the Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards
The Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards (Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards) are presented annually by Phoenix Art Museum to provide recognition and financial support for emerging, professional, Arizona-based artists. Eligible candidates apply through an open call and must be considered emerging artists who are currently working and have resided in Arizona for a minimum of one year, among other requirements. The award includes a $10,000 prize, a group exhibition at the Museum, and a lifetime PhxArt Membership. The 2024 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards jury was assembled by Christian Ramírez and included 2023 Scult Award recipient Jenea Sanchez, Andrea Alvarez, and Alexis Wilkinson.
EXHIBITION SPONSORS
The Arizona Artist Awards are made possible by the Scult Family; Sally and Richard Lehmann; and the Cohn Fund for Arts and Culture, a founding gift of the Phoenix Art Museum Education and Engagement Excellence Fund.
Safwat Saleem: The Unrequited Love Institute and 2024 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards are organized by Phoenix Art Museum and curated by Christian Ramírez, the Cohn Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and Director of Engagement. The exhibitions are made possible by the Cohn Fund for Arts and Culture, a founding gift of the Phoenix Art Museum Education and Engagement Excellence Fund.
Contemporary art exhibitions and projects are made possible in part by the Rob Walton, Jordan Rose, and Rose Law Group Fund for Contemporary Art.
All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by the Opatrny Family Foundation, with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.
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Phoenix Art Museum announces 2024 Arizona Artist Awards winners
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