Edra Soto is a Puerto Rican-born artist, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto sparks meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations about socioeconomic and cultural oppression, the erasure of history, and the loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico and now engaged with her Chicago community, the artist has developed her work to explore questions about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.

She has presented recent solo exhibitions at The Sculpture Center, Cleveland; Maine College of Art & Design; Hyde Park Art Center; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. Her work has been featured in notable group exhibitions, including the Carnegie Museum of Art; Driehaus Museum, IL; and MSU Broad Art Museum.

She has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, Joyce Award, 3Arts Next Level Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship, and the MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund, among others. She has received numerous public commissions, including Public Art Fund at Central Park, New York; Noor Riyadh; the Boston Public Art Triennial; the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Terminal 5 at O'Hare International Airport; the Chicago Botanic Garden; and Millennium Park in Chicago. Soto’s work is in the collections of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago; and the Art Institute of Chicago.