Julia CSekö
Brazilian /American Interdisciplinary Artist focused on Collaboration, Community engagement, and ExXperimentation
eXplore my work
Photo by Thomas Logan
Bio
Csekö is a visual artist whose practice bridges art, activism, and community engagement. Born in Colorado to Brazilian parents in self-exile during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Julia Csekö was raised in Rio de Janeiro. An interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural advocate, Csekö has received numerous prestigious awards and residencies, including the Our Energy Future Grant, ALAANA Creative County Grant, the SMFA Traveling Fellowship, the Collective Futures Grant, the Be The Change Award, and multiple Local Cultural Council grants. In 2025, Csekö returned to Studios at MassMoCA as an Alumni AiR. Csekö recently completed a three-year Artist Residence at the Boston Center for the Arts and the eight-month-long Salem Public Artist Residence, and has been invited to several notable programs, including Sculpture Space and MASSCreative’s Create the Vote Fellowship.
Csekö’s work includes public art commissions and is held in prominent collections such as the Tufts University Permanent Collection, Emerson College, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio (MAM Rio), the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and Centro Cultural São Paulo, as well as private collections worldwide.
Her passion for arts advocacy began during her BFA studies at the Federal University of Rio (UFRJ), where she played a pivotal role in securing an increase in Brazil’s national arts and culture funding from 0.3% to 1%. She also served on a cultural policy committee engaging with the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. Now based in North America, Csekö continues her advocacy work, championing arts funding, accessibility, and community engagement.
Current Projects
I am honored to be collaborating with my fellow Brazilian artist, Raquel Fornasaro, on a public artwork responding to the theme of sustainability, supported by the Our Energy Future Grant.
Funded by the sponsors of Mass Save through a Community Education Grant, the City of Framingham and the Town of Natick have invited us to design and lead two complementary participatory public art projects, one in Framingham and one in Natick, centered on the theme Our Energy Future. This initiative highlights the vital role each of us plays in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our homes and buildings. Through creative engagement, our project aims to amplify the importance of collective action and inspire communities to imagine and build a more sustainable future together.
Filmed by Bento Marzo
Many Hands Make Light Work is a symbolic collective action. Survivors of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1965-1985) and families affected by State violence passed 500 lbs of rock salt hand to hand to be deposited at the front gate of the DOPS building. The now-abandoned DOPS building has a long history of political violence and human rights violations. This action marked the 56th anniversary of the AI-5 decree and the darkest moment of Brazil’s authoritarian government. The participatory performance was organized in partnership with human rights activists from the Memory, Truth, Justice, Reparations and Democracy Collectives (Coletivos de Memória, Verdade, Justiça, Reparação e Democracia). The action supports the demand to transform this building into a museum for human rights.
This topic surfaced as I confronted my own life story, being born in the USA to Brazilian parents in self-exile during the dictatorship, and the looming shadow of authoritarianism in North America.
This is a 30-second clip of the video Many Hands Make Light Work. If you are interested in watching the full video or learning more about this ongoing project, please reach out.
Filmed by Bento Marzo
It was an honor to return to the Sculpture Department at the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio (EBA UFRJ) where I received my BFA in 2004. At the Sculpture Studio, I created silicone and plaster casts that embody the importance of this place in my formation and to generations of Brazilian artists.
The video shot by cinematographer Bento Marzo is a love letter to the public university UFRJ and the iconic modernist architecture of the Ilha do Fundão Campus. The casts created in the Sculpture Studio are the narrative element guiding the viewer through hallways, classrooms, offices, the surrounding landscapes, and larger-than-life modernist architecture.
The Federal University remains vibrant and more active than ever, offering free high-quality education. Despite all the challenges to continuing operational, it flaunts a robust and diverse student body, where people from myriad backgrounds and geographic regions of Rio and the country converge to study, teach, and make art.
In caseYou missed it
MassMoCA Assets for Artists Alumni Residency
July 16th to August 11th
Photo by Inky
During my MassMoCA Studios residency, I explored scale through textile and flag works. The unfinished piece featured here includes custom print flags with excerpts of the Constitution alongside Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “I Am Waiting.” A partial installation of DEMOCRACY IS A VERB AND SO IS LOVE on campus allowed me to experiment with its impact in a public setting. The residency provided an invaluable opportunity to see how the expansive MassMoCA environment accommodates site-specific, monumental work. This piece affirms what a flag represents both to its people and historically, inviting us to reclaim the symbol as a reminder that the work toward social justice, human and civil rights, and upholding democracy is never done and is a labor of love.
Social fabric solo show
This exhibition, under the title Social Fabric, is the culmination of visual artist Julia Csekö’s eight-month-long Salem Public Artist in Residency program in 2024. The solo presentation features newly-created monumental textile work that responds to and engages with dozens of migration stories collected from local residents through the participatory public art installation Transcending Borders Immigrant Experiences and Dreams.
Photo: joana Traub Csekö
In addition, the exhibition showcases two video pieces created in collaboration with the Salem Access TV and premiered at the Salem Old Town Hall. The first time-based project consists of a series of interviews with members of local immigrant communities, and the second features three professional dancers invited by the artist to activate the Welcome Dresses, wearable pieces made of thousands of colorful satin ribbons printed with the phrase YOU ARE WELCOME HERE in fifteen languages commonly spoken by immigrants in greater Boston; these ribbons were distributed to the public during the residence period.
About the Curator Michaela Blanc
Blanc is the Wikimedian in Residence at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and a Leadership Advisor at Art+Feminism. She recently curated Adaptation – Local Notes at Tomayko Foundation and Adaptation Screening Program at Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh. Previously, she was a Curatorial Fellow at the MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), a guest curator in the SMFA at Tufts University and MassArt Low Residence MFA programs, a Graduate Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a curatorial intern at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. She holds an MA in Museum Studies/Museum Education from Tufts University and a BA in Art History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
*This program is supported in part by a grant from the Salem Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency and the ALAANA grant from the Creative County Initiative of the Essex County Community Foundation.
Photos by By Dana J. Quigley, DJQ Media LLC
Hannah arendt
Limited Edition Print
I am honored to announce that Bard College Hannah Arendt Center has commissioned a Speaking Truth to Power limited edition print featuring words by Hannah Arendt from the Origins of Totalitarianism.
15x15 in Limited Edition Print
Paulo freire
LIMITED EDITION print
15x22.5 in Limited Edition Print
From the Speaking Truth to Power series featuring words by Brazilian educator and thinker Paulo Freire.