2023 Alumni Award Honoree Silvia López Chavez spreads joy and community connectivity — and color — with her murals throughout Boston’s suburbs and beyond.
2023 Common Good Awards Alumni Award Honoree, Silvia López Chavez
Silvia López Chavez is a Dominican-American artist whose collaborative, community-centered murals aim to forge meaningful cross-cultural connections. Her vibrant, joyful works dramatically transform urban spaces by honoring the identity of a place and its people, all while remaining approachable and accessible to a wide audience. López Chavez views art-making as a critical tool for community building, and seeks to bring awareness to contemporary issues of social and environmental justice throughout her work. She is a frequent collaborator on public art projects with urban planners, architects, non-profits, developers, and activists.
López Chavez’s local works can be seen across Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Lynn, Salem, Beverly, Danvers, Ipswich, and Marblehead. She is a Neighborhood Salon Luminary at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the recipient of a New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) Leadership in Public Art award (2021), and a Studios at MASS MoCA artist in residence. Commissions include the U.S. Chinese Embassy in Beijing, Google HQ in California, SeaWalls Boston, MIT, Harvard University, Twitter, and Northeastern University.
In this Boston Public Art Triennial artist profile, MassArt alumna Sabrina Dorsainvil BFA '12 discusses how her background in civic design shapes vibrant, community-centered murals.
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