thesis works 2025
thesis works 2025
thesis works 2025
“the unbecoming of your touch”
mixed media on denim
“falling up the stairs in reverse”
graphite on rives bfk 
“hoc est corpus meum”
lithograph on rives bfk

“me as many, me as vessel” diptych
intaglio on laser cut rives bfk
“dont bite the hand that feeds you”
a hand, a handkerchief, coyote teeth

“all that we were when held together by want and wound” 
intaglio on rives bfk
“veteran”
pastel and mixed media on childrens bedsheets



Vero Silva is a queer-chicane artist from New Mexico,
who works primarily through printmaking and painting and textile manipulation to capture various alterations/iterations of the female form while referencing their chicane lineage and queer identity
.

What does it mean to be seen? What does it mean to know yourself, your body?

Artmaking is a way of life and a fundamental aspect of my being, through creation I am able to learn the most intimate aspects of myself, which would otherwise remain hidden. 


My work exists at the intersection of dysmorphia and dysphoria as a means to reclaim the at times volatile and hostile world of girlhood through a queer lens. In the culmination of my work, I push and blur the lines of beauty and unease through the contortion of limbs, folds and creases, and impossible anatomy. Through the manipulation of the female form, I capture the various uncomfortable feelings I have associated with my body and my gender beginning in adolescence. 

Each piece I create is a part of me and serves as a non-traditional self-portrait which pays homage to the resilience of our bodies while also highlighting the body as a form of landscape.

My identity and experience with my body are fundamentally inseparable from the land which I grew up on. To me, where my body ends, and the earth begins is not a finite boundary. I find that the human experience, mirrors the land around us; permeable and transient, yet undeniably enduring of hardships and pain, overwhelming yet serene. I urge viewers to spend time reflecting on their bodily experience, and how it can be defined by the natural world, and to notice the similarities and differences universally shared.



Recent Exhibitions

(upcoming) Journeys
Denver, CO
2026

Homecoming
Santa Fe, NM
2025

Queer Impressions
Chicago, IL
2025

Embodied, Unspoken
Denver, CO
2025

Hidden Experiences 
Denver, CO
2025

A Graphic Journey;Prints by
Pablo Picasso and Student Works
Longmont, CO
2025

Out:Dated 
Denver, CO
2024
Awards and Grants 

NOVA Award, SPARK Gallery, CO

Directors Choice Award, University of Denver, CO

Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award, University of Denver, CO

Create Award, University of Denver, CO

PinS Grant Award, University of Denver, CO

Hornbeck Scholar, University of Denver, CO

Anderson Ranch Scholarship Recipient, Anderson Ranch Snowmass, CO

Breakthrough Scholar Davis Scholarship, NM

First Generation Davis Scholarship Recipient, NM

Education
University of Denver Bachelor of Fine Arts
Magna Cum Laude
2025
New Mexico School for the Arts
2021

Contact at
vero.silva@du.edu
@y3ntzz on instagram