About

About the exhibition 

Dark Matter features interdisciplinary Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas’ first solo exhibition in San Diego.  Combining three bodies of work, Cuevas dives into the history and future of petroleum’s omnipresence in the world. She has responded for decades to global activities through corporate branding defacement and visual campaigns.

Cuevas launches her residency with ICA San Diego by covering the gallery walls with oil, imagining a new environment that has been taken over by the extracted fossil fuel. Ants, armadillos, bats, and turtles must now adapt to the changing world.

Accompanying the mural will be new works created for ICA San Diego that involve the dipping of paintings into chapopote, a mix made from tar used for asphalt – a connection to the imagery found in the surrounding mural. These dipped paintings have been a constant in Cuevas’ work since 2007. Alongside the paints are original advertisements promoting the cleanliness and use of oil-based products which highlight the historical role of the industry. Around the gallery’s columns are antique oil canisters holding bouquets of plastic flowers, growing from the oil that formerly inhabited the container.

Watch Minerva Cuevas at work live in Encinitas!

The artist will be working in residence at ICA North in Encinitas February 19, 20, 26, 27, and March 5 from 3 pm to 5 pm.

Everyone is welcome to join her in the Studio!

More to Explore!

During your visit to ICA North you can also enjoy the ICA Sculpture Trail perched on six acres overlooking the San Elijo Lagoon. The trail features eleven site-specific installations inspired by the coastal landscape that surrounds them.

Feel free to submit the form below if you’d like to stop by, and we’ll remind you of the dates and the time when you will be able to see Minerva at work, plus you’ll get the Sculpture Trail map in advance!

About Minerva
Minerva Cuevas (b. 1975, Mexico City) is a socially-engaged conceptual artist who adopts corporate and advertising imagery to comment on natural resources, food production, labor practices, capitalism, and colonialism. Cuevas has presented work at the SFMOMA, San Francisco; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Dallas Museum of Art; Guggenheim Museum; South London Gallery; MOCA Seoul; SITE Santa Fe; MoMA PS 1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and many more. Cuevas lives and works in Mexico City and is represented by the gallery kurimanzutto.

_{Image Credits}

_{Minerva Cuevas, Installation view Dark Matter, ICA San Diego, 2022.}