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 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. Cecilia’s multidisciplinary artwork has been shown in solo exhibitions 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 cities including Hiketa, Paris, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Oaxaca, and Tijuana, where she was commissioned to paint a segment of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S.
Through painting, drawing, comics, animation, sculpture, and public-facing projects, Cecilia develops a speculative mythology that question who gets to tell stories and shape cultural memory. Her work blends fiction, personal anecdotes, and reinterpretations of existing myths to challenge folkloric and mainstream representations of Mexican identity. Alongside her studio practice, Cecilia develops collaborative and public-facing projects centered on storytelling, migration, and cultural memory. In 2024-2025, she served as co-designer of “Aquí en Chicago” at the Chicago History Museum, an exhibition exploring Latin American presence and immigrant histories in Chicago through immersive visual environments and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Cecilia's distinctions include the Roger Brown Studio Residency (2026), a 3Arts Award (2024), the Chicago Artists Coalition Residency (2024–2026), the Hyde Park Art Center Radicle Studio Residency (2021), the Ox-Bow School of Art Leroy Neiman Foundation Fellowship (2019), and the Fulbright Scholarship (2017). In 2022, she was recognized as one of the “100 Most Creative Mexicans in the World” by Forbes Mexico, and in 2023 she was included in NewCity’s “Art 50 – Chicago’s Artists’ Artists” list.
Inflorescence, 2022.
Image by Jonathan Castillo.
Featured Artworks
Viajeros Extraordinarios (Extraordinary Travelers), 2024
Image by Jonas Müller-Ahlheim
Aquí en Chicago, 2025
Image by the Chicago History Museum
Semilla, 2024
Image by Jonas Müller-Ahlheim
Solo exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago
Swamp, 2024
Image by David Holtzer
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 Müller-Ahlheim
Bulb, 2022
Image by Jonathan Castillo.
Dancing Tulip, 2022
Image by Jonathan Castillo
Night Deer | Blue Self-Portrait, 2019
Image by Jesse Meredith