BIOGRAPHY
Beatriz Cortez received an M.F.A. in Art from the California Institute of the Arts and a Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies from Arizona State University. Cortez’s work explores simultaneity, life in different temporalities, and different versions of modernity, particularly in relation to memory and loss in the aftermath of war and the experience of migration, and in relation to imagining possible futures. She has had solo exhibitions at Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles; Clockshop, Los Angeles; and Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, amongst others. Her recent group exhibitions include Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the MSU Broad Museum, East Lansing, Michigan; ICA San Diego; and 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, California. Cortez is the recipient of the Artadia Los Angeles Award, the inaugural Frieze Arto LIFEWTR Sculpture Prize, the Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, the Artist Community Engagement Grant, and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.
COURSES TAUGHT
While at UC Davis during spring quarter 2022, Cortez will teach Art 151 “Intermediate Sculpture” and the graduate seminar ART 223 "Concepts & Critique: Imaginaries of the Future". ART223 examines ideas about posthumanism, nonhumanism, and the end of the anthropocene in order to imagine alternatives to the traditional Western understanding of humanism, modernity, and of individual, well-defined identities, and asks students to engage with the ideas discussed through writing, studio production, and a series of in-class critiques.
PUBLIC LECTURE
Banner image: Beatriz Cortez, Glacial Erratic, 2020. Steel. 9.5 x 9 x 7 feet. Courtesy of the artist.