2026-2027 Solo Exhibition Series

Women & Their Work is pleased to announce the artists selected for our 2026-2027 solo exhibition series. Chosen through a call for entries, our jury selected eight artists from a field of over 400 statewide entries. The artists are Saba Besier, Alexandria Canchola, larí garcía, Tamara Johnson, Bonny Leibowitz, Ruhee Maknojia, Andrea Tosten, and Lisa Woods. Each artist will create a new body of work for their exhibition.

 

Saba Besier

sababesier.com | Dallas, TX

The luminosity and malleability of porcelain allows Saba Besier to produce ethereal and mysterious organic forms that suggest an underwater ocean environment. These sculptural structures mix what could exist (where we have not yet explored) with what is thriving as a biodiverse habitat on human-made structures. These possibilities add an element of hope for a strengthened oceanic ecosystem that is slowly evolving, despite the current threat of climate change.

 

Alexandria Canchola

alexandriacanchola.com | Corpus Christi, TX

Informed by stories of a childhood shaped by a Cuban grandmother and a Mexican-American aunt, Alexandria Canchola’s vibrant, layered installations intertwine personal memories with colorful depictions of her family’s lives. Her large-scale risograph murals, paintings, sculptures and videos connect personal history to broader cultural narratives of identity, feminism, and generational bonds that trace the evolving role of women.

 

larí garcía

larigarcia.com | Houston, TX

Guided by an investigation into the dislocated and dispossessed, larí garcía creates sculptural installations using a constellation of found objects and a variety of materials. Repurposed domestic furniture and other ephemera evoke grief and precariousness. Research, listening, and observation inform garcía as she reveals the inherent limits of meaning, while questioning the ways we are conditioned to perceive and value people and the objects that reflect them.

 

Tamara Johnson

tamarajohnsonstudio.com | San Marcos, TX

For Tamara Johnson, traditional trompe l’oeil letter rack paintings provide a source of inspiration and whimsy to place and examine objects in unfamiliar settings. A range of hand-crafted objects including children’s blocks, a hair bleaching kit, fake plastic cheese slices, and tools speak to the “objectness” of motherhood, a sense of play, and the darker underbelly of desire, denial, and body autonomy. In her work, domestic objects confront unobserved systems of the physical body and the built environment.

 

Bonny Leibowitz

bonnyleibowitz.com | Richardson, TX

Bonny Leibowitz imagines a time in the not-too-distant future when the climate crisis can no longer be ignored. She will create hybrid worlds that include the natural environment that is disintegrating with what might follow as we try to replace what has been lost. Using what remains—the salvage and debris—she forges an evocative environment in various states of collapse and construction. As she builds this new ecosphere, many questions arise: how will this new world be designed and constructed? What concepts, constructs, and values will endure? The natural and manufactured worlds remain inextricably entwined.

 

Ruhee Maknojia

ruheemaknojia.com | Houston, TX

The unseen and often unexamined role that museums play in sustaining power structures animates the work of Ruhee Maknojia. Replicating the fate of twin antique carpets from Iran, she examines how cultural objects can be curated into art, allowing museums to partake of the imperial strategy of orientalizing the ‘other’ and controlling the narrative. Her work challenges notions of the uniqueness of civilizations, revealing how cultural and aesthetic traditions evolve through layered influences including Islamic theology and Judeo-Christian histories.

 

Andrea Tosten

a-scribe.com | Dallas, TX

The difficulty Andrea Tosten finds in tracing her family’s African history from the Akan and Yoruba people leads her to a research-based exploration of the connections between socio-mathematics, traditional patterns, and rudimentary attempts to contact extraterrestrials. Just as she must meta-physically traverse time and space to connect with her ancestors, light-years must be crossed to contact extraterrestrials. Tosten uses the processes of hand-lettering, repetitive drawing, found objects, and heliograph signals in Morse code to create and examine these connections.

 

Lisa Woods

lisabwoods.com | Austin, TX 

The Ogallala, an essential yet disappearing aquifer in West Texas that will take centuries to recharge, inspires Lisa Woods to create a world where technology, ecology, and mythology intertwine. Through installations, kinetic sculptures, and video projections, Woods juxtaposes mechanistic modern agriculture with the fluid animistic qualities of water. Surrounded by multiple devices, a monumental sculpture of the Ogallala as an ancient subterranean goddess will command the gallery as a symbolic transfiguration.

 

 

JURY PANEL

This year’s jury panel was comprised of W&TW artist alumnae Shana Hoehn and Vicki Meek, as well as curator Claudia Zapata.