Peru, 1950
Lives and works between Philadelphia, USA and Lima, Peru.
Living most of the time outside her country, migration has been a topic of Cecilia’s artwork. Relationship between human beings and nature has also been a constant of her quest.
She studied Visual Art at the Catholic University of Lima, the Cambridge Arts and Crafts School in England and the Scuola del Nudo in Rome, Italy.
Among her personal exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art and Design and Art Museum, Costa Rica. Museum of Contemporary Art, Panama. Museum of Modern Art, Guatemala. University of Salamanca, Spain. Indiana University, Humboldt University, California. Museum of Modern Art, Moscow. Vladimir Palace, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Among her collective exhibitions: Biennial of Havana, Biennial of Architecture and Art of the Canary Islands, Open Maps in Madrid and Barcelona, the Ev + A Project in Ireland, The Floating Earth in Queensland, Australia and Getxophoto in Bilbao, Spain and The 2015 Chang Jiang Biennial, China.
She was a guest artist at the Banff Arts Center, Canada, the Chemin D'Art project in France and the 51st Venice Biennial. She has participated in Art for Change at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo and the Royal Museums of Brussels, both exhibitions with topics related to climate change. At FIA Caracas 2008, she was the international guest artist.
In September 2010, she exhibited at the ICPNA Miraflores in Lima. The same year, in Chile, she was awarded Best foreign artist. She was also a resident artist at the engraving workshop of Guanlan, in China.
In 2011 Cecilia had a personal exhibition at the World Bank in Washington DC and in 2013 she was invited to the Photography Biennial in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2014, Cecilia participated in the Photography Festival in Pingyao, China, where she won the Award of Excellence. Cecilia Paredes is National Prize Winner in ICPNA in Lima, Peru, Francisco Amighetti Prize, Costa Rica, First Prize Biennial Cervecería Costa Rica and First Central American Biennial Mention.
Her artwork is housed in: San Antonio Museum collection, Texas. Costa Rica Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art, Panama. Museum of Art and Contemporary Design, Costa Rica. Museum of the City of New York. Deutsche Collection. World Bank. Wifredo Lam Center. The Natural Art Museum of California. IILA Institute Rome, Italy. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, among others.
Cecilia Paredes is a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow since 1998 and Associate Faculty Master at the University of Pennsylvania.
The historian Luis Fernando Quirós writes:
“Cecilia transmutes a symbiotic path between Man and nature and in doing so, reaffirms her identity and the essential link between all forms of nature. In this way, the artist re-elaborates her work embodying from memory her corporeal existence, a language in which, as in her acute imagination, there are no confines.”