Desert Rider

Desert Rider explores the sociopolitical realities and imaginative interpretations of automotive and skateboarding subcultures through diverse works by local Arizona and regional artists, focusing almost exclusively on Latinx and Indigenous perspectives that have defined the identity of the Southwest.

Desert Rider is an exhibition inspired by modes of transportation in the Southwest that invite both reflection and introspection of our collective cultural imagination. While post-war culture of the 1950s has mythologized our dependence on and fascination with the automobile, this exhibition connects more closely to the counter culture developments of the 1960s epitomized in the Easy Rider phenomenon that occurred simultaneously with various civil unrest movements. 

Images of customized vehicles roaring through the wide-open landscapes of the American Southwest captured notions not only of freedom and liberty, but also rebellion and nonconformity.

Credit: Overview from museum website