Edra Soto: Distinguished Alumni Lecture
La Casa de Todos / Everyone's Home at Comfort Station, 2024. Photo: Maria Burundarena
Join us for a lecture by artist Edra Soto followed by an audience Q & A.
Doors open at 5:45 p.m. Free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Explore the Visiting Artists Program homepage for visitor information, recordings of past events, and more.
Edra Soto (MFA 2000) is a Puerto Rican–born artist, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago community, the artist has evolved to raise questions through her work about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.
Soto has presented recent solo exhibitions at Comfort Station, Chicago (2024); Maine College of Art & Design (2024); Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York (2024); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2023); Abrons Art Center, New York (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (2017), and The Arts Club of Chicago (2017). Her work has been featured in notable recent group exhibitions including Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2024); Entre Horizontes, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2023); no existe un mundo poshuracán, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022); and Estamos Bien, La Trienal 20/21, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2021).
She has been awarded the Joyce Award; 3Arts Next Level Award; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; Joan Mitchell Fellowship; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship; and MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. Soto has received numerous public commissions: Public Art Fund at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park, New York (2024); Noor Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024); Now + There, Central Wharf Park, Boston (2023); the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023); Terminal 5 at O'Hare International Airport (2023); Chicago Botanic Garden (2022); and Millenium Park in Chicago (2019). Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico; and Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.
Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access.