Minerva Cuevas

Last updated
Minerva Cuevas
Minerva Cuevas.jpg
Born1975 (age 4849)
NationalityMexican
Known forconceptual art

Minerva Cuevas (born 1975) is a Mexican conceptual artist known for site-specific interventions guided by social and political research and social change ideals. [1] Her production includes installation, video works and photographic works as well as contextual interventions in specific locations. She lives and works in the neighborhood of el Centro Histórico in Mexico City, often directing her artistic and social efforts towards questioning the capitalist system. [2] She is a member of Irational.org and the founder of the Mejor Vida Corp. (1998) and International Understanding Foundation (2016).

Contents

Early life and education

Cuevas studied at the National School of Plastic Arts, UNAM from 1993 to 1997.

Cuevas also worked with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as part of their Public Knowledge curatorial initiative. She engaged with local San Franciscans about the city's changing ecology as explored through the theme of fire. [3]

She was cited in Rubén Gallo's book New Tendencies of Mexican Art. In this 2004 book, Gallo recognizes how Cuevas’s connection to the streets of Mexico City and the struggles of working people guides her multimedia, often web-based artwork and social activism. [2]

Notable works

Mejor Vida Corp

In 1998, Cuevas founded a project titled Mejor Vida Corp (MVC or Better Life Corporation). A non-profit organization. MVC provides free products and services, the project distributes “international ID cards, subway tickets, and barcodes for grocery stores”—all examples of what art historian Pamela M. Lee describes as “movement as a movement,” [4] incremental disruptions of neo-liberalist policy through social welfare endeavors. Cuevas is the sole proprietor of the Mejor Vida Corporation, working as the owner, CEO, CFO, public relations officer, fundraiser, and more. [2] The program addresses social and economic issues, in what becomes a complex and sophisticated critique of a traditional institution, the capitalist corporation. [5] Professor of Latin American Studies Scott Baugh analyzes this, concluding that, through the satire and parodying of an official business website, Cuevas embodies the “traditions of the film avant-garde and of the Latina/Latino cultural expression…[which] tend to resist, by definition and pragmatically, the conventionality of the mainstream.” [6]

According to Baugh, the digitized radio transmissions of Cuevas's MVC introduce an accessible voice that bypasses the Eurocentric conventions of corporate media and establishes a new mode of active communication with the Mexican working class. [7]

Video and installation

As detailed by art critic Jean Fisher, Cuevas's written accompaniment to the performance piece, Drunker (1995), presents substance abuse "as a means to 'obliterate’ the anguish of trauma, where the sufferer is caught between the compulsion to bear witness to the catastrophe and the impossibility of articulating it." [8]

Cuevas’s solo exhibitions engage a variety of artistic forms, culminating in multisensory installations that, while operating in high art institutions, advocate public interventionism. Many of these contain specific visual and auditory allusions that generate social commentary. In particular, Cuevas’s Social Entomology, exhibited at the Van Abbemuseum in 2007, employs projected cellular and animal imagery, overlaid with a metaphorical orchestral soundtrack entitled Insect Concert, to remark on human societal structure and its exploitative relationship with the natural world. Critic Francis McKee explains the technological nature of Social Entomology as Cuevas’s evidence for modern humanity’s commodification of animals and the natural world. [9]

In a text entitled “Corporatocracy, Democracy and Social Change (in Mexico and Beyond),” Cuevas co-authors a discourse on the contemporary dissonance between humanity and the natural world. Her remarks affirm her opposition to the anthropocentric attitude driving industrialization, which has historically occurred at the expense of, not only animals and the natural world, but also indigenous and agrarian peoples. [10] Moreover, initially explored in her Information/Misinformation billboard series, Cuevas's thoughts on the communicative importance of “national rumor” in a modern age find footing in the written record of the Lier En Boog philosophy and art symposium, Ljubljana: Information Strategies, in which she participated in 2002. [11]

Awards and fellowships

Cuevas was awarded the DAAD grant in Berlin (2005), reinvited in 2019 for a solo show at the daadgalerie in Berlín, Germany, was part of the Delfina Studios residency program in London (2001).

Exhibitions

Biennials

Selected solo shows

Collections

Cuevas' work is held in many permanent collections including: the Tate, [13] Centre Georges Pompidou, Guggenheim, [14] MUAC, UNAM, Mexico City, Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José Luis Cuevas</span> Mexican artist

José Luis Cuevas was a Mexican artist, he often worked as a painter, writer, draftsman, engraver, illustrator, and printmaker. Cuevas was one of the first to challenge the then dominant Mexican muralism movement as a prominent member of the Generación de la Ruptura. He was a mostly self-taught artist, whose styles and influences are moored to the darker side of life, often depicting distorted figures and the debasement of humanity. He had remained a controversial figure throughout his career, not only for his often shocking images, but also for his opposition to writers and artists who he feels participate in corruption or create only for money. In 1992, the José Luis Cuevas Museum was opened in the historic center of Mexico City holding most of his work and his personal art collection. His grandson Alexis de Chaunac is a contemporary artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iñaki Bonillas</span>

Iñaki Bonillas is an artist living and working in Mexico City. His recent work is based on the photographic archive of his grandfather J.R. Plaza and family. In 2007 he participated in a group exhibition at Claremont Museum of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Burns (artist)</span>

Bill Burns is a Canadian artist.

Charles Esche is a museum director, curator and writer. His focus is on art and how it reflects, provokes and influences changes in society. He lives between Edinburgh and Eindhoven.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abraham Cruzvillegas</span> Mexican visual artist

Abraham Cruzvillegas is a Mexican visual artist. He is best known for his work with found objects, and particularly his ongoing "autoconstrucción" project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis McKee</span>

Francis McKee is an Irish writer and curator working in Glasgow.

Rubén Torres Llorca is a Cuban artist specializing in painting, drawing, sculpture, collages, and photography. He studied from 1972 to 1976 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro" in Havana and from 1976 to 1981, studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), also in Havana. Torres resided in Mexico City, Mexico, from 1990 to 1993 and has resided in Miami, Florida, since 1993.

Ruben Ochoa is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Havana Biennial</span>

The Bienal de La Habana was an traditional Latin, Caribbean event, originated in Havana, Cuba, that aims to raise awareness to promote contemporary art and giving priority to Latin-American and Caribbean artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deyanira África Melo</span> Mexican sculptor

Deyanira África González Melo is a Mexican sculptor who generally works in ceramics, depicting elements of the human form, especially the torso, generally with mutilations and other disturbing elements to dispute the otherwise traditional and sensual depictions of the human body. She has exhibited her work since studying at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP) in Mexico as well as in Europe and the Caribbean. Her work has received recognition in Mexico and abroad, and is a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosina Cazali</span>

Rosina Cazali is a Guatemalan art critic and independent curator. She serves as an advisory committee member for CIFO. Cazali works as a columnist for El Periódico, a Guatemalan newspaper. She co-curated the 2014 Guatemalan Biennial, XIX Bienal de Arte Paiz, along with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Anabella Acevedo and Pablo José Ramírez.

Eduardo Abaroa is a Mexican artist and writer working in the fields of sculpture, installation and performance.

Mariana Castillo Deball is a Mexican visual artist currently based in Berlin. She works primarily in installation, sculpture, photography and drawing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galit Eilat</span>

Galit Eilat, born 1965 in Israel, is an independent curator and writer living in the Netherlands.

Flor Minor is a Mexican sculptor and graphic artist, known for bronze sculptures and graphic work that generally depict the male form. Her works often are based on the concept of balance or lack thereof. Minor has had individual exhibitions in notable venues in Mexico and abroad, and her work can be found in a number of public and private collections. She has been recognized in Mexico with membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Marina Camargo is a Brazilian visual artist who works in various media including video, photograph, installation and drawing.
She lives and works in Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Berlin (Germany).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gülsün Karamustafa</span> Turkish artist (born 1946)

Gülsün Karamustafa is a visual artist and filmmaker recognised as "one of Turkey’s most outspoken and celebrated artists." Using personal and historical narratives, Karamustafa explores socio-political issues in modern Turkey and addresses themes including sexuality-gender, exile-ethnicity, and displacement-migration. "Hailed as one of Turkey’s most influential contemporary artists," her work reflects on the traumatic effects of nation building, as it responds to the processes of modernization, political turbulence, and civil rights in a period that includes the military coups of 1960, 1971, and 1980. Karamustafa was one of the laureates of the 2014 Prince Claus Award, a prestigious award presented to "individuals for their outstanding achievements in the field of culture and development and the positive effect of their work on their direct environment and the wider cultural or social field." She lives and works in Istanbul.

Adrián Villar Rojas is an Argentinian sculptor known for his elaborate fantastical works which explore notions of the Anthropocene and the end of the world. In his dream like installations he uses aspects of drawing, sculpture, video and music to create immersive situations in which the spectator is confronted with ideas and images of their imminent extinction.

Aydan Murtezaoğlu is a visual artist working mainly in photography and installation. She lives and works in Istanbul.

Patricia Torres, known as Patricia Torres is a Mexican artist. She uses different forms of visual expression, such as painting, drawing, printmaking, multimedia pieces and video. The themes in her work are related to the female body, its acceptance and the interventions that are made to normalize it, to ensure that it is accepted and valued in society.

References

  1. Fullerton, Elizabeth (January 2019). "A Conversation with Minerva Cuevas". Sculpture. 38 (1): 16–25.
  2. 1 2 3 Gallo, Ruben (2004). New tendencies in mexican art : the 1990s (Hardcover ed.). New York: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN   9781403961013.
  3. "Fire's Cultural Ecology | Minerva Cuevas engages in a dialogue with San Franciscans about". publicknowledge.sfmoma.org. Archived from the original on 2018-03-09.
  4. Pamela Lee, Forgetting the Artworld (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 156.
  5. Ruben Gallo, New Tendencies in Mexican Art: The 1990s. (New York: Springer Publishing, 2004).
  6. Scott L. Baugh, “Cinematic Dis-contents: Addressing a Latina/Latino Avant-Garde through the Browser Apparatus,” Journal of Film and Video 57 (2005), 57-77.
  7. Baugh, “Cinematic Dis-contents,” 64-75.
  8. Jean Fisher, “Minerva Cuevas and the Art of Para-sitic Intervention,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 27 (2011): 58.
  9. Francis McKee, “Minerva Cuevas: Anarchy in the Hive,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 26 (2011): 54.
  10. Minerva Cuevas and Eduardo Abaroa, “Corporatocracy, Democracy and Social Change (in Mexico and Beyond),” Third Text 27 (2013): 163.
  11. Annette W. Balkema and H.P Slager, “Ljubljana: Information Strategies,” Concepts On the Move 17 (2002): 77.
  12. "Kurimanzutto". www.kurimanzutto.com.
  13. "Minerva Cuevas born 1975". Tate.
  14. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/12020/Minerva%20Cuevas.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)