Minerva Cuevas (Mexico City, 1975) finds the raw material for her work in the anaylsis of the notions of value, exchange, and property inherent to the capitalist system and its social consequence, and the latent possibility for rebellion that exists within everyday life.

Her work encompasses a wide range of media—installation, video, muralism, sculpture, and public intervention—which she uses to investigate the politics that permeate social and economic ties. By generating aesthetic excercises with objects and images of everyday consumption, Cuevas encourages us to rethink the role corporations play in the exploitation of natural resoruces and in the conditions of social inequality around the world.

Through her work, she explores familiar visual references and questions the ideas present in our political imaginary to locate channels of social commmunciation. In her interdisciplinary projects, elements of anthropology, ecology, and marketing converge.

Cuevas studied at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP) of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (1993-1996). She founded Mejor Vida Corp. and joined Irational.org in 1998. She created the International Understanding Foundation [IUF] in 2016. She has been an artist resident in the following programs: Berliner Künstlerprogramm at Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Germany, 2003; Media Art of the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus, Germany, 2003; Delfina Foundation, London, 2001; and The Banff Centre for Arts, Canada, 1998.

About the works: 

In this series, Minerva Cuevas continues to employ petroleum as her principal axis for an intervention with objects and elements related to marine exploration and the oil industry, with the intention of juxtaposing the beauty of classic marine landscapes and references to ecological concerns with the crude product.

Through this investigation the artist juxtaposes the beauty of nature alongside references to ecological concerns with the crude product. With Energol - Motor oil vases and Ford, chapopote drips falling off the surface, merging the pictorial and sculptural field. Whereas flowers ordinarily require water to grow, and ultimately survive, here this essential need is replaced with petroleum.