Cekis

Nelson Rivas, known as Cekis, is a Chilean urban artist born in 1976 in Santiago. He grew up in the city centre under a dictatorship, captivated by the political murals painted without permission on its walls. Skateboarding, which he picked up in the late 1980s, exposed him to tags and New York-style graffiti and spurred him to start writing his own name on the streets. By the mid-1990s he had become one of South America's first-generation graffiti artists.

In 1998 he opened the continent's first graffiti store in Santiago, a hub that brought together a community of artists and helped legitimise street culture in Chile. In 2004, drawn by his curiosity for muralism, he moved to New York City, where he has lived ever since. His style blends expressionism, fauvism, graffiti art, Mexican muralism and botanical painting in compositions driven by colour and energy. His "Fence Series," exploring immigration and self-imprisonment, marked a shift toward more politically engaged work.

Based between a studio in Harlem and a screen-printing workshop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, he paints murals around the world while returning to Chile every year. Complex Magazine named him among the fifty most influential street artists of all time. His work is shown at Galería Espacio Rojo and WXLLSPACE.