Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist born in El Salvador and based in Los Angeles and Davis. Her work explores simultaneity, multiple temporalities, the untimely, and speculative imaginaries. Her work is currently on view at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and at LACMA, in Los Angeles; New Museum, in New York; Museo Anahuacalli and Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City; and ICA San Diego in Encinitas. Her work was included in the Boston Public Art Triennial (2025), 60th Venice Biennale, "Foreigners Everywhere," (2024) and the 14th Shanghai Biennale, "Cosmos Cinema" (2024), among others. Cortez is a recipient of Latinx Arts Fellowship (2023), New School Vera List Center Borderlands Fellowship (2022-24), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016). She holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and a doctorate in Latin American Literature from Arizona State University. She teaches sculpture and critical theory at UC Davis. 

The Maya Kaqchikel collective Kaqjay wrote an essay titled "Objeto Antiguo" or "Ancient Object" where the authors argue that objects are alive and have a will, establish relationships with humans, and also choose which humans to engage with and which humans to avoid. Scientists, particularly in the field of quantum physics, also argue that matter is intelligent, that it is alive, and that it is able to self-organize, to multiply, to move. In this artist lecture, Cortez explores the spiritual lives of objects as a conceptual nucleus in her work.