2026 CLAY BIENNIAL CURATORIAL COMMITTEE
We are pleased to announce the curatorial committee for the 2026 Clay Biennial, tierra. Part of Craft Contemporary’s ongoing Clay Biennial series, this iteration unfolds through layered understandings of the word tierra.
tierra as ground beneath the body, as homeland carried across distance, and as a living archive shaped by labor, violence, and care. Expanding beyond clay toward practices grounded in land and earth, the exhibition approaches earth-based materials as carriers of relation: touched, altered, remembered, and tended. tierra foregrounds Latinx, Indigenous, and Black artists whose practices reflect emotional, familial, and cultural connections to land.
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Andres Payan Estrada (
@andres_payan ) — tierra Lead Curator; artist and curator whose practice moves across craft, material politics, and queer experience; Senior Curator at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts
Frida Cano (
@arttextum ) — Artist and curator whose research-based practice maps cultural ecologies and systems of knowledge; Senior Curator at Craft Contemporary
Mercedes Dorame (
@mercedes.dorame ) — Tongva artist whose practice engages land, sky, and ancestral knowledge, weaving material inquiry with questions of visibility, memory, and Indigenous continuity
Joel Garcia (
@rageone ) — Huichol artist, educator, and cultural organizer centering Indigenous land, healing, and collective care; Director of Meztli Projects
Cannupa Hanska Luger (
@cannupahanska )— Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota artist and cultural innovator whose work activates Indigenous worldviews, ecological repair, and collective futures across material and social practice
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tierra is created in collaboration with the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts.
@el.rubincenter 
