Cecilia Beaven is a Mexican visual artist based in Chicago. Through her work, which spans illustration, painting, drawing, animation, film, and sculpture, Beaven explores, experiments, and exposes her perspective on her Mexican identity, developing a visual narrative with personal stories, mythology, and a dash of fiction.

MEZCAL VERDE: How did your interest in art and illustration begin?

CECILIA BEAVEN: I have been drawing for as long as I can remember, creating images has always been my favourite activity. I later studied art and formalised this interest.

MV: How did your project as Cecilia Beaven begin?

CB: When I finished my studies (I studied at La Esmeralda, Mexico City) I started working doing freelance projects like illustrations and commissioned paintings. Eventually people started to spot my work and seek me out for larger projects like murals and animations, or to invite me to exhibit my work in different spaces. And so, one thing led to another.

MV: What is the part of your job that you enjoy most?

CB: Being in my studio working or playing. I always have several projects going on at once, so I jump from one to another while listening to music, taking a break to read a comic, going back to work, making myself a coffee... I can be in the studio for hours on end without realizing it.

MV: What techniques do you use?

CB: I use a lot of them. I do acrylic painting, murals with vinyl, drawings and comics with Indian ink, sculptures with ceramics, traditional animation, some digital drawing... Each medium gives me something different and I like to explore them all to add expressive tools to my visual vocabulary.

MV: What are the themes, narrative and/or discourse of your work?

CB: Through my multidisciplinary work, I explore an open, non-linear visual narrative and reflect on the development of a personal mythology. I am inspired by Mexican mythology, my life in Mexico City, and my current reality living in Chicago. My work includes mythological, ethnographic, and introspective research. I try to create intriguing and absurd visual narratives that reveal a mythology that is seemingly strong, but also fragile and introspective.

MV: What is the inspiration behind the label for Mezcal VERDE?

CB: I based my work on the figure of Xipe Totec, a Mexica God who represents cycles of life, death, and renewal. Representations of Xipe Totec show him wearing the skin of a person or a skinned animal. I played with this image and made myself the character, wearing the skin of a lizard, which I like because it is an ancient, strong, and patient animal. I found it to be a significant image after 2020, a strange and difficult year that made me think a lot about strength, resilience, and social and biological cycles. We all need new skin, stronger armor.