Edra Soto

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My interdisciplinary practice is embedded in visual arts, social practice, and architectural interventions. At this intersection, I strike a balance between an immersive collective experience while also sharing an intimate perspective with my viewers. To achieve this, I create generous and inclusive experiences that engage objects as both a symbol and an archive for understanding history, culture, and formations of knowledge. In dismantling the boundaries between the audience, the work, and my role as artist, I prompt viewers to reconsider the nature of urban space, cross-cultural dynamics, and personal responsibility.

Edra Soto is a Puerto-Rican born artist, curator, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space, The Franklin. Soto has exhibited extensively at venues including Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, IL; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art's satellite, The Momentary, AK; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, PR; the Arts Club of Chicago, IL; the Abrons Arts Center, NY and the Whitney Museum of American Art; NY. Soto's large-scale public art commission titled “Screenhouse”, is currently on view at Millennium Park in Chicago. The artist has attended residency programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME, Beta-Local, PR, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, FL, Headlands Center for the Arts, NY, Project Row Houses, TX and Art Omi, NY, among others. Soto has been 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. The artist lives and works in Chicago.