Beatriz Cortez (b. 1970, San Salvador; lives and works in Davis and Los Angeles) received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2015) and a PhD in Latin American Literature from Arizona State University (1999). Cortez is faculty at University of California, Davis. Solo exhibitions have been held at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor (2023); Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown (2023); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2022); Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont (2022); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2021); Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles (2019); Occidental College, Los Angeles (2019); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2018); and Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford (2022); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2021, 2016); Michigan State University Broad Art Museum, East Lansing (2021); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Panama (2021); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica (2020); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2020); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (2019); TEOR/éTica, San José (2019); Ballroom Marfa (2019); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2019); John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017). Cortez is the recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship (2023), New School Vera List Center Borderlands Fellowship (2022-24), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), Frieze LIFEWTR Inaugural Sculpture Prize (2019), Foundation of Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2019), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2017), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016). She has participated in residencies at Atelier Calder, Saché (2022); California Studio Manetti Shrem, University of California, Davis (2022) and Longenecker-Roth, University of California, San Diego (2021). Her work is permanently on view at Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego North, Encinitas.

Cortez’s work is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Michigan State University Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; El Paso Museum of Art; Ford Foundation, New York; Lawrence University, Appleton; Museo de la Imagen y la Palabra, San Salvador; and Museo Comunitario Kaqjay, Patzicía.