Ximena Cuevas

In 2011, Cuevas announced that she would no longer be making films of social commentary, but instead was working on a project in Guerrero dedicated to the conservation of sea turtles.

In 2001, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired nine of Cuevas' videos for its permanent collection, which was the first time a Mexican video artist's work had been included in MoMA's collection. A total of twenty-four of her videos are in MoMA's collection.

Lesbianism and gender identity are also recurrent themes in her work. Besides her artist career, she has also worked in production, coordination, and editing with Marcela Fernández Violante (for whom Ximena edited the short De cuerpo presente, 1997), Jesusa Rodriguez (Víctimas del Pecado Neoliberal, 1995) and  Astrid Hadaad (Las Reinas Chulas], and in 2015, by invitation of Isela Vega, to work on the 40 year homage of the work by singer Juan Gabriel, a referent on Mexican popular culture. Since 2011 Cuevas lives on and off in the state of Guerrero and has been heavily involved in environmental conservation efforts with sea turtles.

She is one of the first videoartists in Mexico that was legitimized by cultural institutions. Her films have been shown in festivals such as Sundance, New York Film Festival, and the touring film series, Mexperimental Cinema. Among her noted works is a 1993 video clip entitled Corazon Sangrante. Her works has also being shown in art institutions such as Berkeley Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum of San Diego, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México, New York's Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art, which in 2001 added nine of her works to their video collection.  

The Sundance Film Festival, New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the touring film series, Mexperimental Cinema, have all been venues for screenings of Cuevas' films. Among her noted works is the 1993 video clip entitled "Corazon Sangrante" which received recognition as a Tatu de Oro (Golden Tattoo) best music video.

She has received many awards, including a Certificate of Merit from the Chicago International Film Festival of 1993, the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Memorial Award in 2001 and an award as the Best Experimental Video from the 18th San Antonio Film Festival in 2012.

After the projection in the Anthropology Museum in September 1992, this group was critically acclaimed by the writer Jorge Ayala Blanco on his article “Viva el Post Cine”.

Beginning in 1990, after becoming disillusioned with traditional films being made both nationally and internationally, Cuevas purchased a camera and began producing her own films. She has received scholarships from the Mexican National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA), the Fideicomiso para la Cultura México (Trust for Mexican Culture), an Eastman Kodak Worldwide Independent Filmmaker Production Grant among others and has made presentations at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Guggenheim of New York and Bilbao, Spain.

In 1979 she began working at the Cineteca Nacional National Film Archive in Mexico City repairing films by cutting scenes censored by the government. This experience inspired her interest in film and the moving image.

Ximena Cuevas (born 1963) is a Mexican video performance artist. Her works often explore the social and gender issues facing lesbians in Mexico. Cuevas's videos and films have screened at Sundance, New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum,

Ximena Cuevas was born in 1963 in Mexico City. She is the second daughter of the marriage of  Bertha Riestra., a psychologist and cultural promoter and José Luis Cuevas, a visual artist, whom had great influence in the on the early education of Ximena: “as a small child I was next to his drawing table, fascinated to see all those lines with their own life somehow(...)”