Ximena Cuevas
Mexico
(Mexico City, 1963) is a video and performance artist. Since she was a teenager, she has been involved in filmmaking, where she worked as assistant director, artistic director, continuity artist and stand-in, and collaborated with directors such as John Houston (Under the Volcano, 1984) and Arturo Ripstein (Love Lies, 1988). Since 1991, she has ventured into the field of video, where she explores topics such as artifice, lies, the relationship between fiction and reality, daily life, fabricated emotions, self-destruction as a form of religion or the features of national identity in Mexico. Her videography is part of important collections such as those of MoMA in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Her video works include The Three Deaths of Lupe (1984), Bleeding Heart (1993), Half Lies (1995), Contemporary Artist (1999) and Cinépolis, the Film Capital (2003). She has been nominated twice for the Ariel Award, granted by the Mexican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for her editing work: in 2017, for the documentary Beauties of the Night (2016), directed by María José Cuevas; and in 2020, for Hari Sama's This Is Not Berlin. Her exhibitions include Feedback (MoMA, New York, 2007), Smile Machines (Transmediale 06 Festival, Berlin, 2006), Locuras contemporáneas (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2006) and Survey the Border (Getty Institute, Los Angeles, 2005).