Episode 226

Photo Courtesy of Public Art Fund ~ Liz Ligon

Ep.226 Edra Soto (b. 1971) is a Puerto Rican-born artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Soto has presented recent solo exhibitions at Comfort Station, Chicago, IL (2024); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2018); Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2017); The Arts Club of Chicago, IL (2017).

Her work has been featured in notable recent group exhibitions including Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2024); Entre Horizontes, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2023); no existe un mundo poshuracán, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2022); and Estamos Bien, La Trienal 20/21, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2021).

She has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship; and MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. Soto has received numerous public commissions, for Noor Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024); Now & There, Central Wharf Park, Boston, MA (2023); the Chicago Architecture Biennial, IL (2023); and Millenium Park in Chicago, IL (2019). Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami and Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.

Artist https://edrasoto.com/home.html

Public Art Fund https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/edra-soto-graft/

MSU Broad Art Museum https://broadmuseum.msu.edu/events/artist-talk-edra-soto/

por la señal | by a signal at Morgan Lehman Gallery https://www.morganlehmangallery.com/exhibitions/edra-soto4

Lazos Terrenales at ICA at MECA&D Maine https://meca.edu/ica/lazos-terrenales-earthly-bonds/

La Casa de Todos at Comfort Station https://comfortstationlogansquare.org/calendar/2024/6/1/la-casa-de-todos

John Michael Kohler Arts Center https://www.jmkac.org/artist/soto-edra/

Carnegie Museum of Art https://carnegieart.org/art/hillman-photography-initiative/cycle-4-widening-the-lens/

US Latinx Art Forum https://uslaf.org/member/edra-soto/

3 Arts Foundation https://www.3arts.org/artist/edra-soto/

Joan Mitchell Foundation: https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/edra-soto

Noor Riyadh https://riyadhart.sa/en/artists/edra-soto/?_program=noor-riyadh