Position Title
Professor of Chicana/o/x Studies
Beatriz Cortez (b. San Salvador, El Salvador) is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar. Her work explores simultaneity, multiple temporalities, speculative visions, and imaginaries of the future. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA (MAC3); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Michigan State University Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; El Paso Museum of Art; Ford Foundation, New York; Lawrence University, Appleton; Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, San Salvador; and Museo Comunitario Kaqjay, Patzicía, among others. Beatriz lives and works in Los Angeles and Davis. Her work is represented by Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles.
Research
Cortez has been invited to participate in the 2024 Venice Biennale. Her work was exhibited recently in two-artist exhibitions at Anahuacalli Museum, Mexico City (2026); Americas Society, New York (2025); a solo show titled Beatriz Cortez: The Volcano that Left at Storm King Art Center (2023); as well as a solo show at Williams College titled The Portals (2022-2023). She has had solo exhibitions at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (20026; 2022); Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont, CA (2022); Craft Contemporary Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2018); Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2016); Centro Cultural de España de El Salvador (2014); Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA (2013); and Museo Municipal Tecleño (MUTE), El Salvador (2012). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including at Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2026); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2026); UCR ARTS, Riverside (2025); Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA), (2025); Boston Public Art Triennial (2025); Kemper Museum of Art, St. Louis (2025); Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis (2024); Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga (2024); 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy (2023); Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford (2022); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2021, 2016); Michigan State University Broad Art Museum, East Lansing (2021); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Panama (2021); Smithsonian Arts + Industries (2021); Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center, New York (2020); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica (2020); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2020); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (2019); TEOR/éTica, San José (2019); Ballroom Marfa, TX (2019, 2017); Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2019); John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan (2018); Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); BANK/MABSOCIETY, Shanghai, China (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador (2016); among others.
Announcements
PROFESSOR CORTEZ RECEIVES ICA STARAWARD
May 18, 2026
Congratulations to Professor Beatriz Cortez, recipient of an ICA San Diego Star Award! Professor Cortez, along with artist Ashish Subedy, was recognized at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Future Forward Gala as an artist whose work and vision shape the cultural and creative landscape in meaningful ways.
PROFESSOR IN GROUP SHOW AT THE LA MUNICIPAL GALLERY
March 30, 2026
Professor Beatriz Cortez is participating in the group show Heavy Metal at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ IN “NEW HUMANS: MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE”
March 30, 2026
“New Humans: Memories of the Future” inaugurates the New Museum’s expanded building with an exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes. New Humans traces a diagonal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers, highlighting key moments when dramatic technological and social changes spurred ne
PROFESSOR IN SHOW HIGHLIGHTING CONTEMPORARY LATINX ARTISTS
March 30, 2026
The groundbreaking group show Aztlán: Tunel del Tiempo opened at the national galleries of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and features works by Professor Beatriz Cortez.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ IN SHOW AT MUSEO ANAHUACALLI
March 30, 2026
Professor Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza’s two-person exhibition La Rebelion de los Objetos (The Rebellion of the Objects) opened at Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City on Feb. 3.
EXHIBITION CURATED BY PROFESSOR CORTEZ SELECTED AMONG BEST SHOWS OF 2025
December 22, 2025
“Temporary Home,” an exhibiton curated by Professor Beatriz Cortez at the Galka Scheyer House in LA, was selected by Hyperallergic among the best exhibitions around the world for 2025.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ IN ARTIST PANEL ON POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC AGENCY IN CENTRAL AMERICA
November 26, 2025
Professor Beatriz Cortez, writer Elena Salamanca and artist and writer Olivier Marboeuf explore the political agency of artistic forms in relation to the spectral resonances in Central America, the Caribbean, and their diasporas in a conversation with curator Patricio Majano.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ IN NEW SHOW AT COMMONWEALTH AND COUNCIL
November 10, 2025
In her new solo show “4 Meters,” Professor Beatriz Cortez explores how everything is in a process of transformation: flowing, moving, changing, and falling apart.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ FEATURED IN EXHIBITION AT CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
September 5, 2025
The new group show Transgresoras: Mail Art and Messages, 1960-2020 at the California Museum of Photography (UC Riverside) features work by Professor Beatriz Cortez.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ FEATURED IN NEW SHOW AT LACMA
September 5, 2025
Professor Beatriz Cortez’s sculpture Ilopango, Stela A (2022) has been included in the exhibition Grounded at LACMA. Grounded will open Sept. 14.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ’S “TEMPORARY HOME” AT THE GALKA SCHEYER HOUSE
July 27, 2025
Professor Beatriz Cortez’s artist-in-residence with the Blue Heights Arts and Culture is concluding with the group show “Temporary Home.”
PROFESSOR BEATRIZ CORTEZ FEATURED IN BOSTON PUBLIC ART TRIENNIAL
May 16, 2025
The first Boston Public Art Triennial features a commissioned work by Professor Beatriz Cortez.
PROFESSOR BEATRIZ CORTEZ IN GROUP SHOW SEEDS: CONTAINERS OF A WORLD TO COME
May 16, 2025
Professor Beatriz Cortez is featured in the new group show “Seeds: Containers of a World to Come” at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ RECOGNIZED AS AMONG THE MOST IMPACTFUL LATINX ARTISTS
October 17, 2024
ARTnews has recognized Professor Beatriz Cortez as one of the most impactful contemporary Latinx artists working in the United States. “75 Latinx Artists to Know,” written by Maximilíano Durón, Paula Mejía, Mauricio E.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ AND ILOPANGO, THE VOLCANO THAT LEFT IN CONVERSATION AND PERFORMANCE
October 14, 2024
Join Professor Beatriz Cortez in a celebration of the closing of “Future Dreaming… A Path Forward,” an exhibition which features her sculpture Ilopango, the Volcano that Left. In a special event, musician and composer Benjamin Cortez and Beatriz Cortez’s sculpture Ilopango, the Volcano that Left engage in a live improvisational human and non-human conversation.
PROFESSORS CORTEZ AND FIFIELD-PEREZ IN TWO PERSON SHOW AT COMMONWEALTH AND COUNCIL
August 17, 2024
A new two-person exhibition at Commonwealth and Council in Mexico City features the works of UC Davis Professors of Art Beatriz Cortez and Fidencio Fifield-Perez.
NEW EXHIBITION AT THE MANETTI SHREM PROFESSOR AND ALUM MUSEUM FEATURES
July 18, 2024
Manetti Shrem Museum’s new exhibiton “Phillip Byrne, Beatriz Cortez, Kang Seung Lee, Candice Lin: Entangled Writing” is an exhibition exploring the way that people and objects move across time and space, allowing for multiple potentialities to exist.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ IN GROUP SHOW AT MONTALVO ARTS CENTER
July 16, 2024
“Future Dreaming, A Path Forward” is a new exhibition at the Montalvo Arts Center featuring fanciful and compelling art that invites viewers to imagine futures built upon the ancestral wisdom of multiple Indigenous heritages.
‘A STELA FOR THE STELAS’Beatriz Cortez Describes Her Inspiration for Work at the Venice Biennale
June 2, 2024
PROFESSOR CORTEZ SHOWS WORK AT FRIEZE NEW YORK
May 1, 2024
Commonwealth and Council returns to Frieze New York with a presentation by Associate Professor Beatriz Cortez, Clarissa Tossin, and Suki Seokyeong Kang.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ IN SHOW AT PERFORMANCE SPACE
April 23, 2024
“Beatriz Cortez & Candice Lin” is a new exhibition at Performance Spacefeaturing works deeply engaged with the histories of colonialism and migration across time and space.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ TO BE FEATURED IN VENICE BIENNALE
January 31, 2024
Professor Beatriz Cortez has been invited to the La Biennale di Venezia – “Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere.” The 60th International Art Exhibition will be curated by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa and will be on view from April 20 to November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and Arsenale venues.
BEATRIZ CORTEZ: NEW FACULTY MEMBER IN ART AND HER VOLCANO, “ILOPANGO”
December 18, 2023
Imagine if one day the shiny mountain-like sculpture you were looking at just … left. Migrated. Gone.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ FEATURED IN SHANGHAI BIENNALE
November 9, 2023
The 14th Shanghai Biennale “Cosmos Cinema” opened Nov. 8 highlighting works that reflect on diverse cosmologies and microcosmic realities and the different ways in which humanity interacts with and understands the cosmos. Professor Beatriz Cortez’s sculpture “El Caracol,” a spiraling structure inspired by the Mayan observatory at Chichen Itza, is featured in this year’s show.
PROFESSOR CORTEZ’S TRAVELING VOLCANO ARRIVES AT EMPAC
November 3, 2023
Ilopango, the Volcano that Left journeyed from the Storm King Art Center to the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, NY earlier this week, taking the scenic route up the Hudson River.
- M.F.A. California Institute of the Arts, 2015
- Ph.D. Arizona State University, 1999
- Institute of Contemporary Art Star Award (2026)
- Ucross Foundation Residency (2025)
- Latinx Artist Fellowship (2023)
- The Arctic Circle Artist Residency (2023)
- Borderlands Fellowship, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School (2022-24)
- Atelier Calder Artist Residency (2022)
- The California Studio Manetti Shrem Artist Residence at UC Davis (2022)
- Longenecker-Roth Artist Residence at UC San Diego (2021)
- Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020)
- Inaugural Frieze LIFEWTR Sculpture Prize (2019)
- Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018)
- Artist Community Engagement Grant (2017)
- California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016)
- CHI 119V-Central Americans in the U.S.
- “On Feathers, Generosity, and the Construction of the Future.” Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities. Eds. Erina Duganne and Abigail Satinsky. Boston, MA: Inventory Press, 2022. 82-93.
- “Expedition Notes.” Public 63 (2021): 36-45.
- “The Memory of Plants: Genetics, Migration, and the Construction of the Future.” Timescales: Thinking across Ecological Temporalities. Eds. Bethany Wiggin, Carolyn Fornoff, and Patricia Eunji Kim. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.
- “Viral Rhizomes.” The Word for World Is Forest. Fiona Ball et al. CCA Wattis Institute. San Francisco, CA: Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2020. 52-60.
- “Simultaneity.” You Are an Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation. Ed. Sarah Urist Green. New York: Penguin Books, 2020. 161-164.
- “A World Not Meant for Us: A Conversation between Beatriz Cortez and Candice Lin.” X-Tra: Contemporary Art Quarterly. 22.2 (2019).
- “The Underworld: Artist Project.” X-Tra: Contemporary Art Quarterly. 22.2 (2019).
- “El Colectivo Kaqjay Moloj: La construcción local de la memoria y el imaginario del futuro.” Kaqjay (2006-////). Ed. Carla Lamoyi. México: Fiebre Ediciones, 2018. 128-160.
- “The Face as a Hyperobject.” Hyperobjects for Artists. Eds. Timothy Morton and Laura Copelin. Marfa, TX: The Creative Independent, 2018.
- “La memoria de las plantas: Sobre el devenir atmósfera.” Revista Realidad 152 (2018): 113-124.
- "Moviéndose entre aguas: La obra de Rafa Esparza“. Revista Realidad, Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas,” El Salvador, 149 (2017): 199-204.
- “Un viaje a través del tiempo: El Proyecto Catherwood de Leandro Katz“. Revista Realidad, Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas,” El Salvador 148 (2016): 197-204.