Cecilia Paredes Peruvian, b. 1950

Cecilia Paredes is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice brings together painting, sculpture, photography, and performance. In her acclaimed “photo performances,” she uses her own body as a performative vessel, exploring themes of exile, displacement, integration, and humanity’s relationship with nature. Often camouflaged within intricately patterned backdrops inspired by tapestries and wallpapers, her body becomes both subject and surface. Reduced to a quintessentially feminine silhouette, she appears to merge with her surroundings, inviting viewers to reflect on how individual identity is shaped by cultural and natural environments. The recurring presence of vegetal and animal motifs further evokes an ideal world in which humanity exists in harmony with, and not in dominance over, nature.

Born and raised in Peru, Paredes became politically active as a student in Lima during the 1970s, ultimately forcing her to leave the country. She subsequently lived in Mexico and Costa Rica, where she spent 25 years before moving to the United States. Today, she divides her time between Philadelphia and Lima. This experience of continual movement has profoundly informed her practice and her understanding of displacement. Paredes describes her life outside Peru as a form of exile: a separation from family, culture, landscape, and the natural world that shaped her early life.

Paredes studied Fine Arts at the Catholic University of Lima, the Cambridge Arts and Crafts School in England, and the Scuola del Nudo in Rome. In 1998, she was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and later received a Rockefeller Foundation Residency at Bellagio, Italy. Her longstanding commitment to environmental conservation has also led her to participate in international initiatives, including the United Nations seminar “Art Changing Attitudes Towards the Environment” in 2008.

Over the course of her distinguished career, Paredes has received numerous awards and honors, including the Ibero-American Excellence Award in Toro, Spain (2022), the Estampa Excellence Award in Madrid (2022), the Excellence Award at the Pingyao Biennial in China (2014), the National Printmaking Award in Lima, Peru, and First Prize at the Sculpture Biennial in San José, Costa Rica. She has also represented Costa Rica at the Venice Biennale.

For more than three decades, Paredes has exhibited internationally in renowned museums and institutions, including the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Lowe Art Museum in Miami, and the Royal Museum of Art in Brussels. Her “photo performances” are held in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections around the world.