“My work alternates between representation and the object as archive. Throughout my practice, history and knowledge are prevalent. I ask the viewer to engage in difficult conversations like socio-economic and cultural oppression, the erasure of history, and the loss of cultural knowledge.”
Edra Soto
Edra Soto is a Puerto Rican born interdisciplinary artist and co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin. Her recent projects, which are motivated by civic and social actions, prompt viewers to reconsider cross-cultural dynamics, the legacy of colonialism, and personal responsibility.
Venues presenting Soto’s work include Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s satellite, The Momentary, AK; Albright-Knox Northland, NY; Chicago Cultural Center, IL; Smart Museum, IL; Museum of Contemporary Photography, IL and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, IL. Soto completed the public art commission titled Screenhouse on view at Chicago’s Millennium Park until Spring 2023. Soto has attended residency programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Beta-Local, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, Headlands Center for the Arts, Project Row Houses and Art Omi among others. Soto was awarded the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant among others. Between 2019-2020 Soto exhibited and traveled to Brazil, Puerto Rico and Cuba as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund.
Soto holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico.
