Juan José Cielo is visual artist working in painting, photography, and short films. He creates works where Latino myth and folklore are part of the visions of a futuristic world, and combines American dreams with his Colombian heritage — imagining the future expands on the thinking people familiar with migration engage in, imagining alternate destinies. The works bridge scenes of rural communities and family with scientific and futuristic elements. Cielo was born in Medellín, Colombia, grew up in Miami, and is based in New York City. He received his B.F.A. from Cooper Union (2019) in New York and studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, France.
His works have been presented in galleries and museums including Coral Springs Museum of Art, The Colombian Consulate in New York, National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, and The Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City. Select residencies include Smack Mellon in New York (2024-2025), Fountainhead in Miami (2023), and Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Uruguay (2023). In 2017, Cielo was artist-in-residence with scientists at a full-scale analogue research facility in Utah simulating living on Mars: the Mars Desert Research Station. Cielo is the recipient of YoungArts’s $25,000 Jorge Pérez Award 2022. His work has been featured on Univision, in National Geographic Traveler Magazine, and on ARTnews.
At MacDowell, Cielo developed a series of paintings where Latino myth and folklore are part of the visions of a futuristic world.
