Biography

Cecilia Vázquez (1967) was born and raised in Mexico City. She attended the National University of Mexico, where she completed her BFA. Later on, she earned her MFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, thanks to the support of a Fulbright grant.

She exhibits her work regularly –both in Mexico and abroad– in museums, cultural institutions, and private galleries. Her sustained practice has granted her a position in the Mexican art-world, having been distinguished in three occasions with the National System of Creators Grant by the National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA). She is also part of the Fulbright-García Robles Experts Network, and participates regularly as a jury member for national and international competitions and grants.

For more than 20 years, she has taught at college level in Mexico, the US and Argentina, and has served as Visiting Artist in several institutions in Mexico and the US. She is currently is an Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA. Before this appointment, she was Tenured Full Professor at the State University of Morelos in Mexico, where she also headed the MFA Maestría en Producción Artística, accredited by the National Register of Quality Graduate Programs. She has also been a Mentor in the Young Creator’s Program (FONCA).

Two monographic books have been published on her work: Fondo, figura y fondo otra vez and Geometría blanda.

Her work is included in public and private collections in Mexico and abroad.

 
FOTO website Cecilia Vazquez

My work poses situations where representation and invention collide to generate unexpected readings within the languages of painting and drawing, seeking to develop a visual experience that questions our conventional notions of beauty.

I feed off situations stemming from the still life and the landscape, and from the invention of shapes that encourage memories of things remotely known. Both approaches share certain features (repetition of form and design, color, size) but differentiate themselves in terms of their affective charge and meaning. By binding them in continuous images, the abstract elements take narrative roles, while the more identifiable shapes act like counterpoints that seek to question our traditional mechanisms of representation. I am interested in maneuvering in the interstice of figurative and abstract syntaxes, in order to revalue the image as a territory pregnant with subjective possibilities in terms of imagination and potential for metaphorical significance.

One of the axes of my production has been the tight conversation between painting and drawing. I am not interested in pigeonholing my practice in one closed denomination, as I find that engaging graphic as well as painting techniques in a same piece spurs the investigation about both disciplines, and fosters unforeseen results based on the problematization of both. In the last few years I have also been developing three-dimensional elements that converse directly with the paintings and drawings, establishing resonances amongst them, and enhancing the specific nature of each solution. This has resulted in the development of installations that appeal to the place in which they operate, articulating a whole corpus that proposes fluid readings between space and visuality, as I am also interested in the grammar of painting out of its traditional genealogy.

I understand finished pieces as attempts to resolve issues that will never be completely unraveled: that it is in themselves where the creative act resides.

My work, thus, privileges the question over the answer.

Curriculum
Publications
Contact
info@ceciliavazquez.com