Cecilia Beaven
Cecilia Beaven (she/her) is a Chicago-based visual artist and art instructor from Mexico City. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which she pursued as a Fulbright scholar, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from ENPEG La Esmeralda (Mexico City). Cecilia’s multidisciplinary artwork has been shown in solo shows in Mexico City, Houston, and Chicago, as well as in group exhibitions in Mexico, the U.S., Colombia, Sweden, Italy, and Japan. She has painted murals in several cities such as Hiketa, Paris, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Pachuca, Tepoztlan, and Tijuana, where she was commissioned to paint a segment of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S.
Through her work, which includes painting, drawing, animation, film, and sculpture, Cecilia develops a speculative mythology with unique visual narratives, questioning who can tell stories and establish the official cultural narratives. She affirms her creative agency by modifying existing tales and mythology and seamlessly adding fiction and personal anecdotes. Through this analytical and ludic experimentation, Cecilia brings a unique perspective on Mexican identity that goes beyond folklore and mainstream ideas of Mexico.
Cecilia is a 2024 3Arts awardee and a 2024 Chicago Artists Coalition Resident. She has also been the recipient of distinctions such as the year-long Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, 2021), the Leroy Neiman Foundation Fellowship at Ox-Bow School of Art (Saugatuck, 2019), and the Fulbright Scholarship program (2017). In 2022, she was considered one of the “100 Most Creative Mexicans in the World” by Forbes Mexico, and in 2023 she was included in the “Art 50 – Chicago’s Artists’ Artists” list by NewCity.
Inflorescence, 2022.
Image by Jonathan Castillo.
Featured Artworks
Night Moves, 2022
Mural at the Chicago Cultural Center, during the exhibition Exquisite Canvas: Mural Takeover by Cecilia Beaven, Miguel A. Del Real, and Anna Murphy.
Image by Fernando Ruiz.
Sprouting Shadows (tryptic), 2024
Image by Jonas Mùˆller-Ahlheim
Bulb, 2022.
Image by Jonathan Castillo.
Dancing Tulip, 2022.
Image by Jonathan Castillo.
Night Deer | Blue Self-Portrait, 2019.
Image by Jesse Meredith.