In this intimate conversation, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Katherine Pill sits down with multidisciplinary artist Yvette Mayorga, whose work links feminized labor and the aesthetics of celebration to colonial art history and racialized oppression through the guise of using pink as a weapon of mass destruction.

Sat, June 20, 11 AM – 12 PM
Free with admission; Registration required

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Yvette Mayorga, artist

Yvette Mayorga is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Her work links feminized labor and the aesthetics of celebration to colonial art history and racialized oppression through the guise of using pink as a weapon of mass destruction. She fuses confectionary labor with found images to explore the meaning of belonging. Mayorga holds an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Mayorga’s most recent solo museum exhibition, Dreaming of You, was at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2023-24. In 2023, Mayorga had her first major solo museum exhibition, What a Time to Be, at The Momentary, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA; El Museo del Barrio,The Center for Craft, Asheville, NC; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, MX; and LACMA, Los Angeles, CA. Mayorga’s large-scale installation, Pilgrimage to the Isle of Pink, is on view with the City of Chicago’s permanent public art collection at O’Hare International Airport’s Terminal 5.

Mayorga has been featured in Artforum, Artnet, Art in America, Art News, Cultured Magazine, DAZED, Galerie Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Hyperallergic, Latina Magazine, Teen Vogue, The Guardian, The New York Times, Vogue, W Magazine, and Women’s Wear Daily. Her works are in the permanent collections of 21c Museum Hotels, Cerámica Suro, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, DePaul Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and New Mexico State University Art Museum.

Website: https://www.yvettemayorga.com/ 

Images:

Yvette Mayorga, Mexican-American Latinx, b. 1991, Magic Grasshopper (detail), 2025, Silicon piping, steel frame, polycarbonate resin, metal, casts, mechanical engineering, #D printed plastics, and marine grade plywood. Images courtesy of Times Square Arts. Photography by Michael Hull. 

Photo of Yvette Mayorga by Marzena Abrahamik, 2025