Minerva Cuevas

Following its inaugural exhibition, Kurimanzutto presents Minerva Cuevas’s first solo exhibition in New York.

For more than three decades, Cuevas’s practice has been rooted in research-based projects concerned with economic and environmental issues and their socio-political impact.

On this occasion, Cuevas will exhibit large-scale wall reliefs especially conceived for the New York context. The reliefs at kurimanzutto are informed by the Mexico City-based artist’s meticulous preparatory research into pre-Hispanic symbology and the history of relationships between oil and wealth management companies. The resulting pieces combine representations of pre-Hispanic gods and goddesses along with corporate logos. Previous monumental relief artwork has been on display at Museum Ludwig in Cologne where the artist introduced us to a broad concept of economics entitled The Enterprise (2019).

Minerva Cuevas was born in Ciudad de México in 1975.

Through the intervention of images and objects of daily consumption, Minerva Cuevas invites us to rethink the role corporations play in food production and the management of natural resources. Employing irony and humor, her work seeks to provoke reflection about the impact that local actions can have on the enforcement of fair labor practices and the redistribution of monetary flow. Cuevas’ practice encompasses a wide range of media, including painting, video, sculpture, photography and installation, through which she investigates the politics and power structures that underlie specific social and economic ties. Her interdisciplinary projects combine aspects of anthropology, product design and economics to explore different ways of intervening urban spaces, museums and galleries. Whilst appropriating the language of the establishment (branding, advertisement and commerce) the artist delivers a message of non-compliance and resistance. A relentless critic of reality, Cuevas discovers her source material through analyzing the notions of value, exchange and ownership that rule a capitalist economy - as well as their consequences. Her work serves as a tool to discuss the condition of the individual under a capitalist regime: constant abuse, dispossession and estrangement from ancestral and cultural identity, but also the latent possibility of revolt implicit in the everyday.

Minerva Cuevas studied BA in Visual Arts at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City. In 2004, she was recipient of the Grant for Media Art of the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus. She was artist in residence at the Berliner Künstlerprogramm en Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) in 2003 and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, in 1998.

Minerva Cuevas lives and works in Mexico City.