THE TRIENNIAL 2025
Beatriz Cortez
Nomad 2, 2025
Steel and mixed-media
Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores memory, temporalities, and migration. Her steel sculptures bring together disparate topics such as icebergs, volcanoes, and ancient forms of knowledge to present forward-thinking speculative narratives.
Nomad 2 was inspired by a trip to the Arctic Circle, where the artist came across a massive boneyard of whale skeletons. She was struck by a global industry once dependent on whale fluids and body parts that were used to illuminate cities, lubricate machinery, and shape high fashion. In response to Boston’s whaling history, Cortez presents a steel vessel shaped like a whale vertebra—a spaceship and space time capsule all in one. Visitors are invited to interact with a control panel holding audio and video recordings. These are part of a speculative archive she’s created, exploring fuel, the survival of whales on Earth, and the possibility of their presence in other places or moments in the cosmos. Situated here on the Boston waterfront, the archive has the potential to grow. The voyage becomes a testament to whale survival, an intricate narrative entangled with modernity, industrialization, and the urgent story of global warming.
Visible 24/7
Charlestown Navy Yard, Pier 3
1st Ave &, 3rd St
Charlestown, MA 02129
NAVIGATE TO THIS LOCATION AND OTHERS ON OUR DIGITAL MAP
Beatriz Cortez
b. 1970, based in Los Angeles
Beatriz Cortez (b. 1970, San Salvador, El Salvador; lives and works in Los Angeles and Davis, CA) received an MFA 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 imaginaries of the future. She has had solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor (2023); Williams College Museum of Art (2023); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2022); Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont (2022); Craft Contemporary Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2018); Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park (2016); Centro Cultural de España de El Salvador (2014); and Museo Municipal Tecleño (MUTE), El Salvador (2012), among others. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at the 60th La Biennale Art di Venezia (2024); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2023); Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI, Troy (2023); Smithsonian Arts and Industries (2021); Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center, New York (2020); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); Ballroom Marfa (2019; 2017); Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); BANK/MABSOCIETY, Shanghai (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito (2016); and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2016). Cortez is the recipient of the Borderlands Fellowship at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in New York (2022-2024); Atelier Calder artist residency in Saché, France (2022); The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residency at UC Davis (2022); Longenecker-Roth artist residency at UC San Diego (2021); Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), the inaugural Frieze LIFEWTR Sculpture Prize (2019), the Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts (2019), the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018), the Artist Community Engagement Grant (2017), and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016), among others. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of California, Davis. Beatriz Cortez is represented by Commonwealth and Council.
