Alida Cervantes Mexican, b. 1972

Biography
Alida Cervantes, Lola con su guajolota, 2020, Oil and spray paint on aluminium 76.5 x 60 inches
Alida Cervantes, Lola con su guajolota, 2020, Oil and spray paint on aluminium 76.5 x 60 inches
Alida Cervantes is a Mexican artist who lives and works in the Tijuana and San Diego border region. Travelling daily between the US and Mexico, Cervantes’ work is characterised by an interest in power relations between race, class, gender and even species. Cervantes’ vivid historical paintings mask a reality in which social and political disparities play out on two levels, both within the intimate social structures of the artist’s home life and in the actuality of the political border that constitutes an impenetrable threshold for many Mexican citizens. The city of Tijuana, the border town where the artist was raised, provides the springboard into a painterly investigation of the actions, relationships and perceptions of Mexico’s cross-cultural and multi-ethnic society. 
 
Cervantes uses painterly devises to create works of semi-narrative that address age-old dynamics of dominance and submission. Thus, her paintings adopt a strongly Mexican cultural discourse, implicated within wider narratives of colonial and post-colonial representation. Images of secrecy and intrigue, transgression, and subversion, as they exist in the artist’s imagination, become sites for the enactment of momentary impulses and sexualised desires. The collision of Catholic, indigenous, and African religious aspects is apparent through expressions of sin, guilt, and sacrifice. Cervantes’ paintings playfully attempt to re-root individuals in an alternative reality, fragmentary characters are imbued with meaningful agency as they revolt against a grand narrative. 
 

Alida Cervantes (b. 1972, San Diego; lives in San Diego and works in Tijuana, Mexico) has had solo exhibitions at Nueva Pastelera, Galería International, CEART, Tijuana, Mexico; Cob Gallery, London, UK; Best Practice, San Diego, US; DESLAVE, Tijuana, Mexico; Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, US; Athenaeum, La Jolla, CA, US; and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, US. Cervantes has featured in group exhibitions at Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; University Art Gallery, San Diego, US; Instituto de Cultura, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico; and Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, US. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, US; the San Diego Civic Art Collection, US; the Charles Saatchi Collection, London, UK; the Pérez Collection, US; and the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s permanent collection.

 
EDUCATION 
2013 MFA Visual Arts University of California San Diego,, USA 
1998 Scuola di Arte Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence, Italy 
1995 BA Visual Arts University of California San Diego, USA
 
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 
2022 Diosa - Monstruo - Robot, Galería Karen Huber, Mexico City, Mexico
2022 Nueva Pastelera, Galería International, CEART, Tijuana, Mexico
2021 Historia de una relación amorosa, Cob Gallery, London, UK
2021 El Desastre Que Dejaste, Best Practice, San Deigo, USA
2020 Untitled Art Fair, Online Edition with Cob Gallery
2018 Pare de sufrir, DESLAVE, Tijuana, Mexico
2018 Figura en lo interior de la guayaba, Bread and Salt,  San Diego, Ca, USA
2017 Majas, cambujas y virreinacas, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, USA
2016 50 Sketches Using Unmixed Black, Athenaeum, La Jolla Ca, USA
2013 Historia de una relacion amorosa, Marcuse Gallery UCSD, La Jolla, Ca, USA
2011 Los mas barbaros, Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, Ca, USA
2007 About Me, Athenaeum, La Jolla, Ca, USA   
 
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS  
2025 In Tandem, Cob Gallery, London, UK 
2022 Virile, The House St Barnabas, London, UK
2018 Known Unknowns,  Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2018 Do you Believe in Life After Love,  DESLAVE, Tijuana, Mexico
2018 Being Here With You / Estando aqua contigo, Museum of Contermporary Art, San Diego, Ca, USA
2017 How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney's Latin America and Latin America's Disney,  MAK  Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, Ca, US as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative
2017 Making Communities: Art and the Border, University Art Gallery, UC San Diego, Ca, USA
2016 Intersectionality, MOCA, Miami, Flo. 
2016 Short Films by or About Women, San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, Ca, USA
2016 La distancia corta,  Instituto de Cultura, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas
2015 Pangea II: New Art from Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery London, UK
2015 Revision Glocal Beijing-Tijuana, El Cubo @ Centro Cultural Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico
2015 Coleccion Elias Fontes, El Cubo@ Centro Cultural Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico
2014 Hidden and Revealed: Representations of Women by Women, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca, US
2014 Forms of Temporal Permanence, TJinCHINA, Tijuana, Mexico
2014 Occupy Thirdspace, Space for Art, San Diego, Ca, US
2013 SUR Biennial, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, Ca, US
2013 The Very Large Array,  Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Ca, USA
2013 Incomplete Survey, Space for Art, San Diego, Ca, US
2012YOU: Investigating Identity, Oceanside Museum of Art, San Diego, Ca, USA
2011 Obra negra,  El Cubo,  Tijuana, Mexico
2011 Vantage Point: Visual Dialogues, Oceanside Museum of Art, San Diego, Ca, USA
2010 Chewbacca to Zapata: Revisiting the Myth of the Mexican Revolution, Morno Kiang Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca, USA
2010 Salon Summer Series,  San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, Ca, USA
2009 Homing In,  Mark Quint Gallery, San Diego, Ca, USA
2008 Who Do You Love?,  L Street Gallery, San Diego, Ca, USA
2007 Viva Mexico!, Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
2007 People, Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, Santa Monica, Ca, USA
2007 New Contemporaries, Simay Space, San Diego, Ca, USA
2006 Strange New World/Extraño Nuevo Mundo, Perspectivas de Tijuana, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Monica Museum of Art
 
SELECTED ART FAIRS
2022 Bienvenue with Galerie Dix9 Hélène Lacharmoise, Paris, France 
2022 Future Fair with Galerie Dix9 Hélène Lacharmoise, NY, USA
2022 EXPO Chiacgo with Cob Gallery, IL, USA
2020 UNTITLED Miami OVR with Cob Gallery, USA
 
COLLECTIONS
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, USA
San Diego Civic Art Collection, USA
Charles Saatchi Collection, London
Pérez Collection, USA
Works
Exhibitions
Installation Views
Fairs
Press | Bibliography
Alida Cervantes, La colonia de antonia, Oil on aluminium, 60 x 70 inches
Alida Cervantes, Mira si te gusta, 2021, Oil on aluminium, 60 x 68 inches

2021 City Acquires 100 New Works Of Art Created By San Diego Artists, SD News

2020 Welcome To Our Clash Pad - The Case Against White Walls, Financial Times, Victoria Woodcock

2019 Issue 35, Savior Complex, N+1 Magazine

2018 NO. 365: ALIDA CERVANTES, The Modern Art Notes Podcast

2018 Known Unknowns at Saatchi Gallery features the work of 17 contemporary artists, Creative Boom, Katy Cowan

2017 Border hopping: Artist Alida Cervantes confronts Mexico’s past and present, The Bay State Banner, Celina Colby

2015 Mexican Painter Alida Cervantes Dips Her Brush in Sex, Race, and Violence, Vice, Olivia Parkes