Artist Talk: Alex! Jimenez

Our bodies and the earth: anxiety and grief in a contaminated world 

Join us for an artist talk with Alex! Jimenez, whose work is featured in MOCA’s current exhibition Living with Injury. In this conversation, Jimenez will share how her own anxiety and grief over a dying planet relates to the years of work she has created about the Sonoran Desert and her community in the southside of Tucson. After losing her mother to cancer in 2016, Jimenez has used her artwork to discuss themes of water scarcity, communal loss, environmental loss and contamination in the Sonoran Desert. She will share how community-engaged art making has been a place to process grief and how the medium of clay can heal and validate people. Join her as she shares images of her process and final images of her piece “Groundwater Embodied” a mosaic mural completed in December 2025 that honors the impact of the TCE (trichloroethylene) water contamination that deeply impacted the community on the southside of Tucson.  

 

Artist Bio:

Alexandra (Alex!) Jimenez is a Chicana print-maker, illustrator, and designer.  Her artistic practice explores her connection to land, culture, and history as a fourth generation Mexican-American in Tucson, AZ. She believes in making her art accessible and relatable to her community. Her background in the sciences is the backbone of her concepts as she often explores animals and plants of the Sonoran Desert. Her love of community and collaboration has led her into work as a public artist. Throughout 2021 and 2022 Alex worked as the first ever Artist-in-residence for Tucson Water. Since then she has completed two major public artworks about grief and loss using community engaged art practices and hand-built clay tiles. The first “In Memory Of” (2023) honors people who have died of COVID-19 and the most recent “Groundwater Embodied” (2025) honors the community affected by TCE (trichloroethylene) contamination of the groundwater in the southside of Tucson.

Artist Talks are included with the price of museum admission.

Accessibility Information 

Accessible parking near a ramp is available on the south side of McCormick St., in front of MOCA’s main entrance. MOCA has an accessible restroom in the lobby and all exhibition spaces are ADA compliant. MOCA is committed to providing access to the arts for everyone; for additional information or for accessibility requests, please call MOCA’s front desk at 520.624.5019 or email info@moca-tucson.org.