Photo by Lydia Daniller

Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez (she/her, b. 1992) is a Mexico-born and Atlanta-raised interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL, as an Artist-In-Residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition. 

Cambrón's art practice is an expression of undocumentedness that draws from her daily life and her family's lineages of labor. Her work intertwines the labor of love in fiber methods that persist after crossing the border and the self-taught labor of furniture production that sustains her family today and has enabled them to thrive on their own terms.

Through matriarchal fiber-crafting techniques, such as sewing, netting, and crocheting, Cambrón reclaims discarded materials from her family's furniture projects. By transforming remnants of textile, vinyl, and leather into portraits, abstract works, and installations, she generates various pathways to navigate in and out of visibility. This agency to visually code-switch is a critical tactic in her work as she confronts the violence inflicted on her community.

Cambrón earned a B.A. in Studio Art from Agnes Scott College (2014) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2025) as a 2023 fellow of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. She has had solo exhibitions at the University of South Carolina's Upstate Art Gallery (2022) and Oglethorpe University Museum of Art (2023), which acquired her painting Estela Tejiendo I. She has exhibited at the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and exhibited and curated at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. In 2025, Cambrón was awarded a full fellowship through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to participate as an artist-in-residence at the Studios at MASS MoCA.