Selva Aparicio (b. 1987, Barcelona, Spain; currently based in Alfred, NY, and Chicago, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture and installation. Her practice explores themes of memory, intimacy, death, and the temporality of life, often through works that celebrate the cyclicity of the natural world. Raised on the outskirts of Barcelona in a landscape once cherished by the Catalan bourgeoisie and later abandoned during the Spanish Civil War, Aparicio draws inspiration from this evolving environment—first a refuge for squatters and outcasts, now a reclaimed natural park. This early and intimate connection to nature fueled her enduring interest in the ephemeral.

Working with nature’s discarded materials—including cicada wings, oyster shells, lettuce leaves, plant seeds, and even human cadavers and hair—Aparicio combines organic matter with traditional craft techniques such as weaving, carving, and sewing. Her work functions as an extended death ritual, foregrounding a unique reverence for the neglected and forgotten. Painstakingly handcrafted, her sculptures and installations pair delicate visual beauty with raw emotional charge, offering space for environmental, social, and political reflection while also creating public outlets for navigating grief and loss in a world increasingly shaped by them.

Aparicio studied Sculpture at Escola Massana in Barcelona, earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and received her MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2017. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; The Museum of Art and Design, NY; The International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; Can Mario Museum, Palafrugell, Spain; Kyoto International Craft Center, Japan; Instituto Cervantes, New York, NY; and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain, among others.

Her accolades include the 2025 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts, the Artadia Award (2022), the 3Arts HMS Fund Award (2023), and the Burke Prize from the Museum of Art and Design, New York (2023), among others. She was named a 2020 Breakout Artist by Newcity Art and is a past recipient of the JUNCTURE Fellowship in Art and International Human Rights (2016) and the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize (2017). Aparicio recently inaugurated a permanent public art commission for Belgium’s Beaufort 2024 Triennale.

Her sculpture Auto-da-Fé, exhibited at EXPO Chicago 2023, was donated to the DePaul Art Museum with funds from the Inaugural Barbara Nessim Acquisition Prize, and Ode to the Unclaimed Dead was recently acquired for the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Alfred University in New York.