Julia CSekö
Brazilian /American Visual Artist
Csekö’s work gravitates around conversations and eXxperiments grounded on a paradigm shift from competitive to collaborative practices in social actions and interactions.
Photo by By Dana J. Quigley, DJQ Media LLC
BIO
Born in Colorado to Brazilian parents in self-exile during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Julia Csekö was raised in Rio de Janeiro. An interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural advocate, Csekö has received numerous prestigious awards and residencies, including the ALAANA Creative County Grant, the SMFA Traveling Fellowship, the Collective Futures Grant, the Be The Change Award, and multiple Local Cultural Council grants. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the Boston Center for the Arts and recently completed the eight-month-long Salem Public Artist Residency. Csekö has also been invited to several notable residencies, including Sculpture Space and MASSCreative’s Create the Vote Fellowship, and in 2025, she will return to MASS MoCA as an Assets for Artists Alumni AiR.
Csekö’s work includes public art commissions and is held in prominent collections such as the Tufts University Permanent Collection, Emerson College, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio (MAM Rio), the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and Centro Cultural São Paulo, as well as private collections worldwide.
Her passion for arts advocacy began during her BFA studies at the Federal University of Rio (UFRJ), where she played a pivotal role in securing an increase in Brazil’s national arts and culture funding from 0.3% to 1%. She also served on a cultural policy committee engaging with the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. Now based in North America, Csekö continues her advocacy work, championing arts funding, accessibility, and community engagement.
I spent 2024 collaborating with artists and tireless human rights activists based in Rio creating a new body of work. This project was made possible due to the generous support of the SMFA Traveling Fellow Grant.
OBA EBA FIAT LUX ET MISERICORDIA
Filmed at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Rio, EBA UFRJ, where I received my BFA, in Sculpture.
collectivum delirium
Is a monumental textile piece made with nylon flags and can be installed indoors or outdoors.
Many hands make for light work
Filmed at the now abandoned DOPS building in Rio - a police station where during the military dictatorship political prisoners were incarcerated, tortured, and many times never seen again.
Salem PAiR
This exhibition, under the title Social Fabric, is the culmination of visual artist Julia Csekö’s eight-month-long Salem Public Artist in Residency program in 2024. The solo presentation features newly-created monumental textile work that responds to and engages with dozens of migration stories collected from local residents through the participatory public art installation Transcending Borders Immigrant Experiences and Dreams.
Photo: joana Traub Csekö
In addition, the exhibition showcases two video pieces created in collaboration with the Salem Access TV and premiered at the Salem Old Town Hall. The first time-based project consists of a series of interviews with members of local immigrant communities, and the second features three professional dancers invited by the artist to activate the Welcome Dresses, wearable pieces made of thousands of colorful satin ribbons printed with the phrase YOU ARE WELCOME HERE in fifteen languages commonly spoken by immigrants in greater Boston; these ribbons were distributed to the public during the residence period.
About the Curator Michaela Blanc
Blanc is the Wikimedian in Residence at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and a Leadership Advisor at Art+Feminism. She recently curated Adaptation – Local Notes at Tomayko Foundation and Adaptation Screening Program at Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh. Previously, she was a Curatorial Fellow at the MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), a guest curator in the SMFA at Tufts University and MassArt Low Residence MFA programs, a Graduate Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a curatorial intern at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. She holds an MA in Museum Studies/Museum Education from Tufts University and a BA in Art History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
*This program is supported in part by a grant from the Salem Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency and the ALAANA grant from the Creative County Initiative of the Essex County Community Foundation.
Photos by By Dana J. Quigley, DJQ Media LLC
Videos
Welcome Dresses
Transcending Borders - Multicultural perspectives
Virtual tour
I will be saying goodbye to my BCA studio on June 2025, if you would like to come visit, please keep that timeframe in mind.
Denholm Building Window Display
October 2024 to October 2025
Worcester, MA
50% of each sale will be donated to organizations that support immigrant rights.
Hannah arendt Limited Edition Print
I am honored to announce that Bard College Hannah Arendt Center has commissioned a Speaking Truth to Power limited edition print featuring words by Hannah Arendt from the Origins of Totalitarianism.
15x15 in Limited Edition Print
Paulo freire LIMITED EDITION print
15x22.5 in Limited Edition Print
From the Speaking Truth to Power series featuring words by Brazilian educator and thinker Paulo Freire.
