Minerva Cuevas is a conceptual artist based in Mexico City, where she studied Visual Arts at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, UNAM. In 1998 she founded Mejor Vida Corp., a long-term non-profit interventionist project that offers free services – such as subway tickets, barcode stickers or student IDs – as satirical critiques of Capitalist institutions. She is also a founding member of Irational.org (since 1999) and in 2016 established the International Understanding Foundation.

Consistent since the beginning of her practice, M. Cuevas’s work locates itself at the intersection of political action and practices of social self-determination. The global economisation of natural resources, the social causes and consequences of climate change and the neoliberal mechanisms of power across private and public space play a central role in her reflections. She employs diverse media, including street interventions, film, installation and mural painting, and often appropriates the established languages of institutional structures, corporate branding and commercial advertising. A clear gesture of resistance and non-compliance characterises nearly all of her works. Rather than speaking in a single voice, her practice unfolds in multiple fields of resonance, encouraging a polyphony of interpretations that respond to geographical, cultural, political and economic perspectives.

Her petroleum-focused projects highlight the ecological and cultural dimensions of fossil fuel dependence. In Dark Matter(ICA San Diego, 2022) and In Gods We Trust (kurimanzutto, New York, 2023), M. Cuevas juxtaposed vintage oil advertisements with sculptural reliefs of hybrid animal-deities mounted on barrels. These works demonstrate how petroleum has been mythologised through advertising, presented as progress while obscuring ecological violence. Another key exhibition, Feast and Famine (Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2015), explored the colonial history of cacao and chocolate, linking global trade, resource extraction and inequality through an ecological lens.

At the Mexico–US border, M. Cuevas investigates the symbolic and political force of territorial boundaries. In Crossing the Rio Bravo (2010–11), she traced a painted line across river stones, reframing the frontier as a fragile, shared ecosystem rather than a monumental division. Migratory Yellow Pages (2022) reappropriated the format of a commercial directory to create a polyphonic resource for migrants, interweaving practical aid with poetry and visual interventions.

M. Cuevas’s solo exhibitions include Minerva Cuevas (Museo de la Ciudad de México, 2012), Game Over (Museo Jumex, Mexico City, 2022), and No Room to Play (daadgalerie, Berlin, 2019). She has participated in numerous biennials worldwide and received fellowships such as the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2003), Edith-Russ-Haus (2004), Banff Centre (1998) and Delfina Foundation, London (2001). Her works are held in collections such as Tate (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Guggenheim (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), MUAC and Museo Jumex (Mexico City) and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven).

In 2023, her first comprehensive monograph was published by RM Verlag, edited by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and Melanie Roumiguière, with texts by Francis McKee, Patrick Charpenel and Esther Gabara, amongst others.

Through her strategic use of advertising and mythology, M. Cuevas reveals how symbolic systems sustain global inequalities. Her polyphonic work resists simplification and is research-based and interventionist, offering spaces for solidarity, ecological responsibility and collective reimagining.