In Conversation: Jeremy Mikolajczak and Virgil Ortiz

Name: In Conversation: Jeremy Mikolajczak and Virgil Ortiz
Start: 2026-02-05T18:30:00-07:00
End: 2026-02-05T19:30:00-07:00
Location: Phoenix Art Museum

Schedule

Thu Feb 05 2026 at 06:30 pm to 07:30 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Phoenix Art Museum | Phoenix, AZ

Join Jeremy Mikolajczak, The Sybil Harrington Director & CEO, for a conversation with artist Virgil Ortiz, whose mixed-media sculpture Po'pay (2024) is currently featured in the newly renovated James K. Ballinger Wing.
Ortiz’s work draws on traditional figurative ceramic styles from Cochiti Pueblo, expanding these forms through an innovative fusion of fashion and textiles. This discussion will highlight Ortiz’s practice within the context of the Art of the American West, offering insight into how his contemporary approach revitalizes ancestral storytelling, reimagines historical figures, and bridges Indigenous tradition with futurist aesthetics.
About the Artist
Virgil Ortiz is one of today’s most visionary artists, fusing Pueblo culture with sci-fi, fantasy, and fashion to create unleashed new worlds. Drawing from ancestral storytelling and his family’s legacy of Cochiti Pueblo potters, Ortiz transforms clay, couture, film, and digital media into futuristic narratives that captivate audiences worldwide. His saga, Revolt 1680/2180 reimagines Pueblo history with time-traveling warriors, igniting Indigenous Futurism on the global stage. With exhibitions from Paris to Miami, Ortiz inspires a new generation to see art as rebellion, resistance, and survival—blazing a path where culture collides with imagination, and the future is unbound.