Selva Aparicio receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts for her sculptures and installations, which employ organic materials and ritualistic imagery to explore themes of death, mourning, memory, and temporality.

To capture the essence of death and memory, Aparicio often incorporates materials that are subject to change and decay. These range from simple elements—flowers, leaves, and dandelion seeds—to the visceral and provocative, including human remains. Through these materials, she addresses issues of environmental degradation, social justice, and the human experience of loss, with each artifact carefully sourced through ethical and sustainable practices.

Aparicio’s creative process unfolds sequentially: Each piece builds on the previous work and informs the next. Ode to the Unclaimed Dead, for example, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic as she researched the politics surrounding unclaimed bodies in the U.S. Prior to this, she worked with the bodies of human donors from the Yale University Anatomy Lab, finding beauty in the wrinkles and folds of aged skin—maps of lives lived. This observation inspired her next work, Entre Nosotros, a full-room installation of cement tiles cast from the wrinkles and folds of human donors’ skin, creating a cartography of the physical marks of human experience.

Born in Catalonia, Spain, to parents she describes as “proto-hippies” who named her Selva—meaning “jungle”—Aparicio’s childhood was tumultuous. Frequent school changes and long periods of solitude fostered deep introspection, and art-making became the one stable thing she could hold on to. She found a sense of calm, stability, and liberation through both nature and art, with art-making becoming a profound tool to ground herself and process life’s challenges. “Traveling and living in different countries has enabled me to integrate complex themes of identity, displacement, and resilience, allowing me to share a rich, multifaceted perspective through my work.”

Awards & Accomplishments

The First Ten (2024-25)
Emerge Committee Acquisition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2024)
Burke Prize, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2023)
3Arts Award/HMS Fund (2023)
Theodore Randall International Chair in Art & Design: Sculpture Dimensional Studies (2023)
Barbara Nessim Inaugural Acquisition Prize (2023)
Artist in Residence, In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypre, Belgium (2023)
The Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation Artadia Award (2022)
Short-listed, Foundwork Prize, LA, Los Angeles, CA (2022)
BOLT Residency, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, IL (2020-21)
NEWCITY Breakout Artist, Chicago Next Generation of Image Makers (2020)
MAKER Grant, Chicago Artist Coalition (2020)
Artist in Residence, International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, IL (2020)
Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize, Yale School of Art (2017)
Artist in Residence, The Studios at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2017)
Juncture Art and Human Rights Initiative Fellowship, Yale Law School (2016) 
Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2015)
Ox-Bow Merit Scholarship (2014)
Artist in Residence, AZ West, Andrea Zittel, Joshua Tree, CA (2014)
Artist in Residence, ObjectLab 6.0, The Chipstone Foundation, WI (2014)
First Prize, Art Futura Art in Motion (2013)
First Prize, ArtFAD, Fostering Art and Design, Barcelona, Spain (2012)
Artist in Residence, Studio Stone, Oliver Harwood, Vancouver, Canada (2011)
Artist in Residence, Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, Stone Studio, Barcelona, Spain (2009)