Biography

Born in Uruguay and raised in Sweden, Cecilia Bonilla studied Fine Art in Florida leading to a MFA at Chelsea College of Art in London where she has lived and worked since 1999.                     

Through the use of manual intervention and digital manipulation most of her practice intends to question the nature of our relationship with the commercial image. Her work ranges from large performative installations to small-scale intimate collages, drawings and videos. She is particularly interested in the found image from glossy magazines using its essential contemporary quality as an indirect way of commenting on the present, a poetic way of observing the here and now.

Bonilla has increasingly employed and explored mass-media images related to women, and notions of being a woman questioning commonly assured links between female sexuality and the commercial image in relation to achieving "the seductive".

Bonilla is currently a lecturer in Fine Art, Digital Photography and Video Arts at the University of Bedfordshire.