Nancy Ariza (b. 1990 in CA, lives in MN) is a Mexican American visual artist and educator. Ariza draws from her Mexican heritage to explore themes of craft, cultural memory, familial ties, and migration. Blending traditional and alternative printmaking, natural pigments, and textiles, her work is grounded in cultural preservation. It seeks to sustain and examine the stories, crafts, and traditions of past generations in response to the physical and generational distance from ancestral homelands, heritage, and traditional knowledge caused by migration. Through her studio practice, she reclaims, revives, and reinterprets these inherited traditions as a way to restore and strengthen those connections.

Ariza has exhibited across the United States at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, in San Francisco, CA; Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University in Chico, CA; Prospectus Gallery, 18th Street Casa de Cultura, and Blanc Gallery in Chicago, IL; Klemm Gallery at Siena Heights University in Adrian, MI; among others. She has received awards from the McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Forecast Public Art, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA and Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, WI.

Outside of her studio practice, Ariza runs Amilado Press, a print studio dedicated to collaborative printing, artist residencies, and community programming. She is an active member of the Twin Cities arts community, serving on the Leadership Council of Serpentina Arts, the board of directors of Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center, and the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program Advisory Committee at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 

Ariza holds an MA in Education and Graduate Certificate in Culturally Responsive Teaching from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, as well as a BFA in Printmaking and BA in Art History from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Contact: nancyariza.art@gmail.com