Minerva Cuevas

Minerva Cuevas (born Mexico City, 1975) is a Mexican conceptual artist.

She studied at the National School of Plastic Arts. UNAM (1993–1997). She is known for the social and political research that guide her projects usually developed as site-specific interventions. Her production includes installation, video and photographic works. She is the founder of the Mejor Vida Corp. (1998) and member of Irational.org.

She was cited in Rubén Gallo's book New Tendencies of Mexican Art

Cuevas was awarded the DAAD grant in Berlin (2005) and was part of the Delfina Studios residency program in London (2001). She lives and works in Mexico City.

Her work is held in the collection of the Tate, MUAC UNAM, Mexico City, Centre Georges Pompidou, Guggenheim Collection Online, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

In 1998, Cuevas founded a project titled Mejor Vida Corp (MVC or Better Life Corporation). A non-profit organization, the corporation aims to aid in small ways those who may be suffering financially. MVC does this through engaging in community welfare, providing free social services and distributing “international ID cards, subway tickets, and barcodes for grocery stores”—all examples of what art historian Pamela M. Lee describes as “movement as a movement,” incremental disruptions of neo-liberalist policy through social welfare endeavors. The program addresses social and economic issues, in what becomes a complex and sophisticated critique of a traditional institution, the capitalist corporation.Professor of Latin American Studies Scott Baugh analyzes this, concluding that, through the satire and parodying of an official business website, Cuevas embodies the “traditions of the film avant-garde and of the Latina/Latino cultural expression…[which] tend to resist, by definition and pragmatically, the conventionality of the mainstream.”

...
Wikipedia