Art of Change 21 – What is the purpose of your first solo exhibition ‘Disidencia’, which just opened at the Mishkin Gallery, at Baruch College in New York?  
Minerva Cuevas – The show presents eight videos. Curated by Alaina Feldman, it is running at a time when the debate over ecological questions is intensifying across the globe. It motivates me because besides being an art exhibition, it reaches an audience that really interests me – namely, students and the academia. Some professors are going to use the art works in their courses and research. I myself am keen to meet marine scientists and spend some time talking with them on a personal level. 

AOC21 – How did ecological issues come to influence your work and what role do they play today? 
M.C – They arose through my observation of social crises in rural areas that had significant natural resources, yet which suffered from great poverty and repression. I’m not an artist who focuses on the formal aspects of art works. Nevertheless, after more than two decades of research based on art projects, it became obvious that the common threads linking them were these social and ecological issues.

AOC21 – What are your future projects?
M.C – I’m working on a new mural painting for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I was doing research on fires in a very broad sense, focusing on the historical fires that shaped the city of San Francisco. This led to me studying the recent forest fires in California and fires as part of indigenous customs. The mural will also link up more generally with radical ecology.

Portrait of Minerva Cuevas

More information about Minerva Cuevas, here

Interview conducted by Alice Audouin.

Find all the articles from Impact Art News n°10 – July-August 2019