María Cepeda Gnecco (b.1996) is a Colombian artist based in the UK.
After a traditional education in painting and drawing in Bogotá, she completed a BA in Fine Art Sculpture in Leeds Arts University and an MA in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Working across sculpture, painting and digital fabrication, and with material experimentation at the centre of her practice, Cepeda Gnecco creates hybrids that blur boundaries between the ideas of human, animal and myth. Rather than illustrating existing mythologies, she constructs fictional belief systems inspired in multiple cultures, histories and the natural world. Her work invites viewers to imagine the rituals, communities and stories that could exist around them.
Her work has been exhibied internationally, including “Strange Fairy tales” in Kunming, China (2021), “The next Big Thing showreel” in Bury Art Museum (2022), “London Grads Now” at Saatchi gallery (2022), and more recently, Take a Seat (London, 2024). María was the Almacantar Award winner for the Slade School of Fine art in 2021 and one of three commissioned emerging artists for Leeds Arts University 2022 curatorial programme.