To my beloved community.
I am working on making this website more accessible (on a crip timeline)! I hope you can visit again soon and access my work more fully.
If you have a request for accessibility related to any project and content, email me at zoe.cinel@gmail.com!
I am an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator from a Mediterranean culture currently based on Mni Sota Makoce, homeland of the Dakota people, home of the Anishinaabe people, and Indigenous people from other Native nations. Through art, I build community around human experiences that are isolating and complex to navigate. Starting from my personal journey as an O1B immigrant and a chronically ill artist, I work collaboratively to produce social change and research nonbinary, interconnected, and interdisciplinary ways of healing and care.
Community-building is the foundation of my practice. Since 2017, I have contributed to CarryOn Homes, an artistic collective dedicated to centering stories of immigration to Minnesota. More recently, I have collaborated with Amplify MN: A Disability Justice Collective on Amplify MN: A Disability Justice Collective, an exhibition rooted in principles of disability justice. In 2023-2024 I curated Chronicles of the Chronic, an exhibition of contemporary artworks that celebrated the disabled/chronically ill community, while also fostering a dialogue among medical professionals and artists/patients.
I have received notable awards, including a 2024 - 2025 MCAD Jerome Fellowship, a 2023-2024 University of Minnesota Liberal Arts Hub Residency with the collaborative project Sound Stories, an MRAC Arts Impact for Individual Grant to support the event series Conversations about Care, a residency with Second Shift Studio (2022-2023), and more. My artistic and curatorial work has been exhibited at institutions such the Walker Art Center, Mana Contemporary Chicago, the Rochester Art Center, the Gordon Parks Gallery, among others.
In 2015 I graduated from ISIA Florence with a BFA in Industrial Design and I hold a master’s in visual studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I have taught at Carleton College, Metropolitan State University, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I am the Curator at the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN.
