Julia Csekö

Julia Csekö, "A Coney Island of the Mind-Marshal McLuhan," 2006, acrylic on canvas, 130.0 x 130.0 cm. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia. Photo: Howard Ursuliak Julia Csekö is an Artist, Educator and Independent Curator having worked at multiple learning, non-profits, and cultural organizations, including Montserrat College of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Early life and education Born in Colorado to Brazilian parents on self-exile during the Brazilian military dictatorship, Csekö grew up in Rio Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA), from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2013.

Career Csekö cites Educator and thinker Paulo Freire, and his critical Pedagogy and dialectical approach to education as a reference for her art practice, and the concept of the Greek agora as inspiration for her time-based work. She seeks to create experiences where "performer and viewer, creation and consumption occupy the same space."

Csekö's work is in the permanent collection of the Tufts University Art Galleries Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. and at Emerson College, in Boston MA.

Csekö has received the Salem Public Artist in Residence 2024 Award, SMFA Traveling Fellow GrantBoston Center for the Arts AiR, a Collective Futures Tufts Art Galleries Warhol Foundation Grant, JArts Be The Change Award, Randolph, and Newton LCC Grants, and a Somerville LCC Ambassadorship. She is also invited back to MASSMoCA in 2025 as an Alumni Resident. In 22’ Cseko was a Somerville LCC grantee, a CTV MassCreative Fellow, and a Somerville Museum Community Curator, at the Somerville Museum 2021, an Artcubator Artist Residency at the Umbrella Center for the Arts 2020–21. In the summer of 2020, she was invited as a Visiting Artist by Emerson College to create a site-specific mural for the Piano Row Campus, featuring the words of late Congressman John Lewis. In addition, she has a public mural on view at Winter Place, downtown Boston, commissioned by the Boston Downtown BID, and created in partnership with the Boston Literary District. In 2018 Csekö was invited to the Assets for Artists MassMoCA residency program where she further investigated her multi-disciplinary practice as a sculptor, painter, and performer.

Awards SMFA Traveling Fellow Grant 2023-2024 Salem Public Artist in Residence Boston Center for the Arts AiR 2023 Collective Futures Tufts Art Galleries Warhol Foundation Grant 2022-23 Be The Change JArts Awardee 2023 Somerville LCC Cultural Ambassador 2023 Newton and Randolph LCC Grantee 2023 MassCreative CTV Fellow 2022 Somerville Museum Community Curator Grantee 2022 Sculpture Space Air 2022 Somerville Arts Council Fellowship 2021 Community Curator award at the Somerville Museum 2021Somerville Arts Council Fellowship 2021 Community Curator award at the Somerville Museum 2021 Artcubator Artist in Residence at the Umbrella Center for the Arts Artist in Residence MAssMoCA, 2018. Walter Feldman Fellowship for Emerging Artists, 2015–2016. The fellowship culminated in her first American, solo exhibition Straight from the Heart—The Rant Series.