Artist Statement

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As a first-generation American, Brazilian immigrant, visual artist, community organizer, and educator, my practice connects to several communities.

Growing up in Brazil, my work is deeply influenced by the vibrant Brazilian culture and landscapes, while also bearing the generational trauma of the country's complex history, including a military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. 

Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy has taught me that dialogue is the only genuine form of education, and this principle consistently influences my creative practice. 

In every aspect of my professional endeavors, I strive to listen and learn, inviting communities into conversation and encouraging participation, agency, and critical thinking. 

Through listening, learning, and adopting a collaborative mindset, we can avoid adhering to authoritarian, colonialist, and imperialist discourses, narratives, behaviors, and practices. 

I am driven by the belief that fatalism can be overcome and that alternatives are plentiful. I envision a future where no one will dare say, "it has always been this way," to justify the unthinkable.

Julia

About

Csekö divides her time between her practice as a Visual Artist, Independent Curator, Educator, Arts Administrator, and Arts Advocate. Currently an AiR at the Boston Center for the Arts, she has received prestigious awards and residencies, including the SMFA @ Tufts Traveling Fellow Grant, Salem Public Artist in Residence, Tufts University & Andy Warhol Foundation Collective Futures Grant, and several LCC Grants in Somerville, Swampscott, Marblehead, Newton, and Randolph. She is also a member of the TUAG Acquisitions Committee and will return to MASSMoCA as an Alumni AiR in 2025.

With extensive experience in the Arts and Culture sector, Csekö served as Community Curator for the Somerville Museum in 2022, where she organized the Sanctuary City Exhibition, and as a MassCreative CTV Fellow, helping to create a policy document to bring arts and culture to Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates' agendas. She has worked in communications, marketing, and administration at Artisan’s Asylum, and previously served as Arts Program Coordinator at the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (IBA Boston), where she implemented an exhibition program at La Galleria, featuring contemporary Latinx artists.

Csekö’s curatorial and visual arts practice began during her BFA at the Federal University of Rio, where she founded the artist collective Group Py (2005-2008) and worked as First Assistant to Brazilian Sculptor Ernesto Neto. She has also been an active Arts Advocate, securing a significant increase in Brazil’s national arts funding and establishing a cultural committee for ongoing dialogue with local representatives and the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

Her work, which emphasizes diversity, inclusion, community building, social justice, political engagement, and artistic innovation, has been featured in group exhibitions at national and international venues, including unconventional spaces like a ferryboat. Her art is represented in collections at Tufts University Art Galleries, Emerson College, the University of British Columbia, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural São Paulo, and in private collections worldwide.

AWARDS, RESIDENCIES, GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS

2024

SMFA Travelling Fellow Grant

Salem Public Artist In Residence

BCA AiR

2023

Tufts University Art Galleries Andy Warhol Foundation Collective Futures Fund Grant

Newton LCC Project Grant

Randolph LCC Project Grant

Somerville LCC Cultural Ambassador Grant

Boston Center for the Arts AiR

2018

Mass MoCA AiR

2016

Walter Feldman Fellowship for Emerging Artists, administered by the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston, Boston, MA.

2010

President’s Award, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

2009

MFA Merit Grant, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

2022

Somerville Arts Council Project Grant Recipient

Somerville Museum Community Curator

MassCreative CTV Fellowship

Boston Center for the Arts AiR

Sculpture Space NY, Winter AiR.

2021

Somerville Arts Council Visual Arts Fellow

2020/2021

Umbrella Art Center Artcubator AiR

COMMISSIONS AND PUBLIC ART

2024

Salem Public Artist in Residence

2023

Be the Change Award, JArts Public Art Piece Fenway, Boston, MA.

Newton City Hall - FURHTUR Flags - funded by the Newton LCC project grant.

2022

Boston City Hall Atrium, FURTHUR Flags, Boston, MA.

Fort Point Open Studios, FURTHUR Flags, Seaport, Boston MA.

Stonybrook Neighborhood Association, Jamaica Plain, MA, Public Mural Commission.

2021

Somerville Arts Council and the Somerville Homeless Coalition. Public wheatpasting mural commission.

2020

Emerson College, Boston MA. Visiting Artist, Mural Commission for the Piano Row Campus

2019

Downtown BID, Winter Pl, Boston MA. Commission of public mural, created in partnership with the Boston Literary District.

2014

Emerson College, mural commission for the Walker Building entrance, Boston, MA.

2005

A Gentil Carioca Gallery, public mural commission, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Inauguration of the Gentil Parede project, supported by the Paulo A.W. Vieira collection.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025

Social Fabric, Salem Old Town Hall, Salem MA.

2024

Vanitas FPAC Art Space, Boston, MA.

Straight from the Heart - The Rant series, Behind VA Shadows Gallery, Storefront Window at 2 Linden St, Harvard Square

Denholm Building window Display, Worcester, MA

2023

This is Where My Heart is., Beacon Gallery - Boston, MA.

Speaking Truth to Power. Randolph Intergenerational Community Center

2022

FURTHUR & Speaking Truth to Power at Mayor’s Gallery, Boston City Hall, Boston MA.

Speaking Truth to Power, Montserrat College of Art Founders Gallery, Beverly, MA.

2019

Embracers pop-up show A R E A Gallery, Boston, MA.

2016

Straight from the Heart - The Rant series, Walter Feldman Fellowship exhibition. Piano Craft Gallery, Boston, MA

2015

YOU/ME MUV Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2012

A Coney Island of the Mind (Um Parque de Diversões para a Cabeça).Galeria Oscar Cruz, São Paulo, Brazil.

2010

Velvet Screw (Parafuso de Veludo). Galeria TAC, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Collections

Tufts University Art Galleries Permanent Collection

Emerson College, Boston, MA.

Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston.

Private Collections in the United States and abroad.

Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection

Centro Cultural São Paulo, Brazil

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2024

Fire in the Basement

2023

Tufts Art Galleries Portrait as Place,

Slater Concourse GalleryMedford, MA

Heroes Among Us PEG Center, Newburyport, MA

Midway Studios, State of the Earth, Boston, MA.

Nearby Gallery, This is America, Newton, MA

Through These Eyes, PEG Center Newburyport, MA.

2022

RED Cambridge Arts Association, Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge MA

Fort Point Arts Community Members Show, FPAC Gallery, Boston, MA

2021

Beacon Gallery, Boston MA, Coded

Umbrella Art Center, Concord, MA, Dazzleship

2020

Beacon Gallery Totems, Boston, MA

Montserrat College of Art, Beverly Faculty Biannual.

2019

Mosesian Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA Please Touch the Art

Nick Cave Joy Parade, Boston, MA.

Nave Gallery, Somerville, MA, Avatars//Ghosts.

A R E A Gallery, Boston, MA, Collage.

Emerson Urban Arts, Boston, MA, Memorial to Joseph Ketner II.

2017

Concord Art, Concord MA, Inhabiting Words.

2016

Nave Gallery Annex, Somerville, MA, The Uncanny Home of Our Imagination.

Gallery 263, Somerville, MA (juried by Ruth Erickson, ICA Curator), On the Body.

2014

Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA, One Language is Never Enough: Latino Artists in Southern New England.

GRIN Gallery, Providence, RI., Nonspace.

Khaki Gallery, Boston, MA Satellite, (School of the Museum of Fine Arts International Student and Alumni Group Exhibition)

2013

Laconia Lofts Gallery, Aftermath: MFA Thesis Exhibition, Boston, MA

MUV Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

17 Cox Gallery, Beverly, MA, Vestments.

2011

Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nova Escultura Brasileira (Panorama of Brazilian Sculpture)

Galleria TAC, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Vênus Terra.

Emerson College Gallery, Boston, MA Generation Next 4

2010

Maus Hábitos, Porto, Portugal (Causos Casos Ou) Quase Casais,

Oscar Cruz Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil, Com Afeto Rio

2009

Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil, Nova Arte Nova,

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, Idyll.

Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, São Paulo, Brazil, Poética Têxtil.

A Gentil Carioca Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Educação.

2008

Galerie Mansart, Centre Culturel Brésil-France, Paris, France 2007

Gallery 32, London, UK, Bandeiras do Brasil, Brazilian Flags.

Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2006, New Acquisitions of the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection (Novas Aquisições da Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand)

Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Bahia, Brazil, 13o Salão da Bahia.

Marcantônio Vilaça Gallery/Casa do Brazil, (Brazilian Embassy), Brussels, Belgium

Traveling exhibition originating at Pinacoteca de São Paulo, SP, Brazil; to Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Um Século de Arte Brasileira: Uma Retrospective da Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand (100 Years of Brazilian Art: A Retrospective of the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection),

2005

Abre Alas, A Gentil Carioca Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2004

Fundação Eva Klabin (Eva Klabin Foundation), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Projeto Respiração (guest artist at Ernesto Neto exhibition).