Edra Soto

Edra Soto is a Puerto-Rican born artist, curator, and educator based in Chicago. She is co-director of the outdoor project space, The Franklin. Through her work, Soto instigates conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Soto’s work has evolved to raise questions about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.

Soto has exhibited at venues including El Museo del Barrio (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, ICA San Diego, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, the Foundwork Artist Prize, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, and the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship, among others. Soto exhibited in 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.