Exploring recovery, community, and the power of co-created stories through art
The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona is proud to announce that Elizabeth Burden has been selected as the 2025 SaludArte artist. Now in its second iteration, SaludArte is a public art initiative in collaboration with the Pima County Health Department, focused on creatively addressing urgent public health issues through community-driven art. This year’s theme—“We Recover Together”—centers on stories of substance use, harm reduction, recovery, and resilience in Southern Arizona.
Burden, a multidisciplinary artist with roots in both a studio and a socially engaged practice, will create public artwork in partnership with community members who have living and lived experience with substance use and recovery. Her approach will blend co-creation to challenge stigma and make space for honest, nuanced dialogue.
“Too often, stories about substance use are told for, or about, people who use drugs, and recovery is rarely mentioned,” says Burden. “This project asks: What happens when those stories are told with, and by, the people most affected? What if art can help us listen differently, or truly see each other in new ways?”
Known for her work in painting, video, and installation, Burden brings a research-based lens to her practice, reflecting on memory, geography, and inherited narratives. With We Recover Together, she aims to create space for collective reflection, healing, and action.
“I am excited to be working with people with living and lived experience in this project. We are using art to co-create spaces for dialogue. I believe art can hold complexity—it can comfort but it can also challenge, and expand the possibilities of who belongs. With We Recover Together, we want to make recovery visible and invite the whole community into the conversation.”
For more information about “We Recover Together” sites and activities, including the online Recovery Exchange, visit WeRecoverTogether.online.
About the Artist
Elizabeth Burden is a multidisciplinary artist who uses drawing, painting, video, sound, and other media in a process of artistic archivy to reflect on geographies, imaginaries, and vestiges of the past/present/future. Her work is deeply rooted in the pull of archives, the construction of histories, ephemeral inheritances, and the ways we make sense of it all.
Burden holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MS in Geographic Information Science from the University of Arizona. She has held residencies at the Studios at MASS MoCA, Santa Fe Arts Institute, and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and was a 2020 Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellow.
Stay tuned for opportunities to engage with the We Recover Together project throughout 2025.
