Silvia Inés Gonzalez

Silvia Gonzalez is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator in Chicago creating spaces where collective wellness takes on critical dialogue, art making, and community building.  Her visual and audio work is a ballad to nostalgia--the borderline between myth and memory. Silvia has curated and facilitated workshops to address structures of power, imagination, repair, collective care, play, confinement, and freedomHer work has been exhibited at The National Mexican Museum of Art, Woman Made Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, MdW Fair, Chicago Art Department, ACRE, and local grassroots art spaces. She is a member of the Chicago ACT (Artists Creating Transformation) Collective and the 96 ACRES Project. As an organizer for the group POC (People of Color) Artist Space, she connects artists of color from across Chicago to resources through meet-ups and development opportunities. 
Silvia Gonzalez attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received degrees in Photography and Art Education. She has a master’s from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she wrote a  thesis on the work done with The 96 Acres Project describing methodologies for engaging radical possibility frameworks with young people. Her action-based research engaged community knowledge and grassroots justice work in the classroom where young people were encouraged to consider how artistic intervention, storytelling, and education become multiple and interconnected points for liberatory departure.
Her teaching and community arts-based programming include workshops for spaces such as Woman Made Gallery 20 Neighborhoods Project in Albany Park’s Centro Autónomo, The Jane Addams Hull House for Cities of Peace, Northwestern Academy, The Art Institute's Ryan Education Teacher Programs, Street Level Youth Media, Gallery 400, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, and as a  full-time educator in Chicago's public and private school settings. She was awarded the 3Arts Make A Wave Award in 2018, the CAC + OtherPeoplesPixels Maker Grant in 2020, and the Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice Grant in 2022. 
Silvia Gonzalez offers workshops, lectures, curation of art and justice-based programming, as well as art, education, and youth work consultation. Please share the date and booking details if you are interested in workshop facilitation or speaking engagements that include a proposed honorarium or stipend proposal. Please note that any opportunity outside of Chicago must include financial support and or reimbursement for travel and lodging.

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