Minerva Cuevas develops research-based projects that offer audiences insight into the social sphere through site-specific artworks. Employing a diverse range of media—installation, video and sculpture—she engages with familiar visual references, such as commercial branding, to foster new channels of social communication.

Minerva Cuevas’s monumental relief mural The River (2024), created for Cc Foundation in Shanghai, intertwines ancient Mesoamerican and Chinese iconographies. This twelve-meter-long mural is influenced by Maya sculptural traditions and Isamu Noguchi’s mural, History Mexico (1936).

At the heart of The River is a high-relief depiction of the Maya Rain God, Chaac, representing the power of water and man’s complex relationship with this vital source. Surrounding Chaac are symbolic animals, such as a jaguar and a turtle-shaped vessel, which resonate with similar motifs in Chinese classical literature—such as The Classic of Mountains and Seas—and Chinese Bronze Age art, particularly from the Sanxingdui archaeological site in Sichuan Province. Cuevas connects the two ancient cultures by highlighting their shared aesthetics, cosmological ideas, and representations of water.

The mural integrates a web of corporate logos, forming the backdrop for the array of mythical creatures and deities, prompting reflection on the commodification of water and drawing parallels between ancient and modern ecological concerns.

Cuevas’s other works include A Draught of the Blue (2013), a video highlighting the endangered Mesoamerican Coral Reef due to climate change, and Petroliana (2017-2024), an installation of motor oil cans informed by Cuevas’s research on the public image of the fossil fuel industry. By blending ancient iconographies with contemporary issues, Cuevas crafts a narrative that transcends time and space, encouraging a critical consideration of the complex relationship between civilization and the natural world.