2020 Faculty Biennial Profile: Zoe Cinel

Meet the artists of the 2020 MCAD Faculty Biennial.

Earth Odyssey is the journey of a non-resident through America. EO is a multiform and ongoing project.
Zoe Cinel an immigrant from Italy, an interdisciplinary artist, and a curator. She has lived in Minnesota since 2015, working with tangible and ephemeral media, in physical and virtual spaces on projects related to immigration, human connections, and walking practices. Some of these projects have been screened/exhibited/performed in landmarks like the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Last spring, Cinel taught the MCAD Graduate Critique Seminar and Performance and Digital Media at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, while working as an Associate Curator at the Rochester Art Center. Cinel is a proud and grateful member of the CarryOn Homes collective.

I walk on this land as a recent immigrant who moved voluntarily. As I walk, I learn from the trees, the roads, and the landmarks that my presence in this country is connected with a painful lineage of colonization, violence, slavery, and globalization, that tried to erase history and ancestral knowledge. I thank the Ojibwe and Dakota people for caring for this land they called home before any of us immigrants did. My support and love go to them and to the descendants of the people who suffered from the African American diaspora; as I march next to them demanding justice, the complex politics of walking unfold for me. Walking is a political action, is resistance, is a walking is a privilege. Lastly, I thank my feet and muscles for all the miles and the resilience we shared so far.