1431 W. Hubbard St., Ste. 201, Chicago, IL 60642
By advance appointment only. Please email contact@chicagoartistscoalition.org
10.09
Cecilia Beaven, FÁTIMA, bex ya yolk
Friday, August 22, 2025 from 5-8pm
Cecilia Beaven FÁTIMA bex ya yolk
Christina Nafziger
Chicago Artists Coalition presents a three-person exhibition by 2024-26 Artist Residents Cecilia Beaven, FÁTIMA, and bex ya yolk, curated by 2024-26 Curatorial Resident Christina Nafziger.
The opening reception will be on August 22 from 5-8pm.
About Curators
Christina Nafziger is a Chicago-based writer, editor, curator, and critic interested in research-based artistic practices, labor and power, the impact archiving has on memory and identity, and the ways in which location affects identity and art making, particularly in the Midwest. She believes in the unlimited potential of approaching all things with a anti-authoritarian, collaborative mindset. When she is not writing she is reading about cyborgs, dolls, and AI.
Christina holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths University of London and a BA. in Art History from Herron School of Art & Design. She is currently the Managing Editor at the arts publication and archiving initiative Sixty Inches From Center. She is also the Associate Editor at the contemporary art publication Create! Magazine.
With a decade of experience as an arts writer, Christina’s writing has been published by the Chicago Reader Chicago-Sun Times, Sixty Inches From Center, Create! Magazine, Newcity, Ruckus Journal, and more. She is also co-editor of Sixty Inches From Center’s inaugural book Chicago Artists + Archives Project: Case Studies in Collaboration (2023).
Image: Photo of an exhibition curated by Nafziger titled Haunted Nostalgia: the mall will be closing in 10 minutes…, featuring the work of Katie Neece.
About Artists
Cecilia Beaven is a visual artist and art instructor from Mexico City, based in Chicago. Cecilia holds an MFA in Studio from SAIC which she pursued as a Fulbright scholar and a BFA with honors from ENPEG La Esmeralda (Mexico City). Cecilia’s multidisciplinary artwork has been shown in solo shows in Mexico City, Houston, and Chicago, as well as in group exhibitions in Mexico, the US, Colombia, Sweden, Italy, and Japan. She has painted murals in several cities such as Hiketa, Paris, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Pachuca, Tepoztlan, and Tijuana, where she was commissioned to paint a segment of the border wall between Mexico and the US.
Through her work, which includes painting, drawing, animation, film, and sculpture, Cecilia develops a speculative mythology with unique visual narratives. Cecilia questions who gets to tell stories and establish the official cultural narratives. The artist affirms her creative agency by modifying existing tales and mythology and seamlessly adding fiction and personal anecdotes. Through this analytical and ludic experimentation, Cecilia brings a unique perspective on Mexican identity that goes beyond folklore and mainstream ideas of Mexico.
Cecilia has also been the recipient of distinctions like the year-long Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago (2021), the Leroy Neiman Foundation Fellowship at Ox-Bow School of Art, in Saugatuck, Michigan (2019), and the Fulbright program (2017). In 2022 she was considered one of the “100 Most Creative Mexicans in the World” by Forbes Mexico, and in 2023 she was included in the “Art 50 – Chicago’s Artists Artists” list by NewCity magazine.
Image: Cecilia Beaven, Moon Bloom, 2023, Acrylic enamel on wall, 9' x 30'
FÁTIMA (b. Earth, 0000) is a Mexican artist working in the fire arts: blacksmithing, lightworking, metal casting and fabrication. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus in Sculpture and Printmaking from Loyola University in New Orleans and pursued her Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In her art practice, FÁTIMA delves deep into the roots of radical ancestry, seamlessly weaving ancient techniques into her contemporary creations. Each piece becomes a vessel through which she communicates with the past, present, and future. Objects and spaces transcend their physical forms, becoming conduits for ritualistic expression with the intention of forging narratives of connection.
Image: FÁTIMA, BRASERO I, 0000, Fire, light, ritual, gathering, steel, 27" x 27" x 16"
bex ya yolk (b. Richmond, VA, 1994) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, book maker, researcher, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design with a concentration in Book Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a full merit scholar. yolk has received grant endowment and recognition from the Atlanta Contemporary, Codex International Biennial Artists' Book Fair and Symposium, the College Book Art Association, VCUarts Adjunct Faculty Research, and the Judith Alexander Foundation. yolk has been invited as an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI, ACRE in Steuben, WI, Real Time and Space in Oakland, CA, and Aviário Studio in Ferreira do Zêzere, Portugal. They are the senior designer at Cita Press, an independent publishing platform promoting open access, public-domain works of feminist literature.
yolk is the founder of an artists’ book bindery + publishing initiative—THUNGRY which focuses on disrupting what we’ve come to understand qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics through experimentation and queering praxis. THUNGRY explores historical research, sociology, and speculative theory into 'the Maternal Complex' made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, rematriation, container technologies, abortion access activism, reproductive justice and health care disparity in the U.S, the maternal identity, matrescence, and the gestational state especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + this kind of body.
Image: bex ya yolk / the book of every title / 2023 / plywood, Tyvek, LED, ink, Migra Italic typeface, sand / 3' x 8'
Headshot: MJ Minutoli
