Yvette Mayorga is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Her works link feminized labor and the aesthetics of celebration to colonial art history and racialized oppression through the guise of using pink as a weapon of mass destruction. They flaunt a maximalist aesthetic rooted in personal narrative and familial histories to examine the Latinx experience in the US. Mimicking the confectionary labors performed by bakery workers, Mayorga uses piping bags to thickly apply her signature bubblegum pink acrylics to varying sized canvases.
Mayorga (b.1991, Moline, IL) holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing with a minor in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Pu$h Thru, moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2025); La Jaula de Oro—The Golden Cage at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara, MX (2024); Dreaming of You at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2023-24); and What a Time to Be at The Momentary, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2023). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in group exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA; John Michael Kohler Art Center, WI; Ballroom Marfa, TX; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA; DePaul Art Museum, IL; Vincent Price Art Museum, CA; The Center for Craft, NC; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, among others. Her work is currently included in the landmark contemporary Latinx painting group exhibition Let us Gather in a Flourishing Way at the Buffalo AKG, NY. Mayorga will present a solo show at The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) in June of 2027, which will be the premier exhibition of SLOMA's expanded campus.
Mayorga’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA; 21c Museum Hotels, Louisville, KY; Cerámica Suro, Guadalajara, MX; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; and New Mexico State University Art Museum, NM. Awards and fellowships include the Cerámica Suro Residency (2023), New Mexico Arts Artists Residency at New Mexico Art Museum (2022) and the Individual Artist Program Grant in Chicago, IL (2022) among others. Mayorga’s work has received coverage in The New York Times, Artforum, Artnet, Colossal, Vogue, W Magazine, Hyperallergic, among others.