Cristina Cárdenas
Organizations
Raices Taller, Pima College, Las Artes Youth Art Program
Location
Tucson, AZ
Biography
Cristina Cárdenas is a Tucson artist known for her public murals and lithographs. Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, Cárdenas moved to Tucson in the 1980s and received an MFA in printmaking from the University of Arizona. Cárdenas is internationally renowned for her art, and has been the recipient of prestigious grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arizona Foundation, and the Lila Wallace residency at the Claude Monet Museum in Giverny, France. Locally, she is a founding member of Raices Taller, an intergenerational cooperative art gallery and workshop, and teaches at Pima College and Las Artes Youth Art Program. Her work often features political themes, like women’s empowerment and migrant deaths along the Arizona/Mexico border.
Audio Clips
Interviewed by Michelle Téllez on February 2, 2024 in Tucson, Arizona
Cárdenas talks about the origin of the bark paper that she uses for large pieces, and why the paper is important to her.
Cárdenas explains the turning point of when her art went from being art for art’s sake to making political statements.
Cárdenas discusses the lack of female role models as she was coming up as an artist and how that has changed in recent years.
Digital Archive
Cárdenas holding a silkscreen print of Medusa in Mexico City via DesertTriangle blog.
Cárdenas’s mural entitled The Women on the outside of a prison at 29th and 4th Streets in South Tucson.
Piece by Cárdenas entitled La Barca.