Mask Alive Art Collection
COMING SOON TO A NEW SPACE
In January 2025, Cultural Coalition was excited to announce the official opening of a long-term pop-up Mask Alive Art Collection Gallery!
A space for creative, artistic expression that exhibits a global collection of masks and art in celebration of the human cultural practice of storytelling.
Located inside the Arizona Center, the gallery showcased the unique artistic vision of Zarco Guerrero, a renowned artist, storyteller, master sculptor, and Cultural Coalition Co-Founder. Drawing from the Mask Alive Artwork Archive, the gallery features over 200 captivating works of art that span Guerrero's 50 year career, presenting a colorful, joyful, and immersive cultural experience. Visitors experienced the transformative power of the mask as they explored the gallery full of over-sized 10-foot puppets, a quetzalcoatl performance art piece, bronze sculptures, upcycled mandalas, and over 100 different carved and sculpted masks.
"It is a dream come true to unveil the Mask Alive Art Collection Gallery and share the incredible artistry of Zarco Guerrero with the Phoenix community," said Carmen Guerrero, Cultural Coalition Executive Director. "Made possible thanks to Arizona Center, the space will also serve as a community hub as a legacy to the power of art to inspire, educate, and connect us to diverse cultures, traditions, and to each other."
The Mask Alive Art Collection Archive currently has over 500 pieces of art catalogued online through Artwork Archive. These pieces have been used by cultural performance arts groups including ballet folklórico troupes, mariachi bands, taiko drum groups, and theater companies all over the state of Arizona for over 40 years. This collection is a community archive of Arizona's performance arts traditions and continues to grow each year.
Our community joined us for First Friday every month for new masks installations and free programming in the gallery space and in the Arizona Center throughout the evening.
This pop-up exhibit experience closed on November 1, 2025. Thank you to the Arizona Center for hosting our art and community programs during this year.
Since 2021 Cultural Coalition has been archiving works of art by Zarco Guerrero that have been used community performance arts organizations throughout Arizona for over 40 years. In 2023, we launched our first online exhibits on Artwork Archive and presented pop-up exhibits in the windows of vacant storefront on Main Street in Mesa, Arizona. Connecting our communities to the history of cultural performing arts in Arizona, in 2024 we expanded our pop-up exhibits to special events, such as the Latino Heritage event at Heard Museum in Phoenix, and in vacant retail spaces at the Arizona Center.
Following the successful implementation of our First Friday Día de los Muertos Pop-up Exhibits & Storytellings at the Arizona Center during Fall 2024, Cultural Coalition was invited to take over a larger vacant retail space to expand the presentation of our art archive collection and provide more free and paid community programming related to the cultural arts. This space has the potential to display the over 500 pieces of artwork from Cultural Coalition’s Mask Alive Art Collection, including many more oversized and life-sized sculptures from artist Zarco Guerrero. Within this larger space, completely curated and designed by Cultural Coalition, we also have the potential to present more programming, including offering regular “open hours” of a gallery space for the general public to come in to view the artwork up-close and learn more about their important history tied to Arizona’s performing arts.
For Zarco, this gallery is a continuation of his desire to connect culture and community, “This retrospective of my art represents a culmination of over 50 years of mask making work we’ve done with various ballet folklórico, mariachi, theater groups, and performance artists to take art into our communities. To ensure that art thrives! It lives! And we’re in this space to keep making that happen.”
Help Cultural Coalition take this legacy project to the next phase of having a permanent home for the collection with space to celebrate our shared cultural artistic legacy with our community!
The Mask Alive Art Collection is made possible thanks to gifts from individual donors and support by:
