Gema Alava (b. 1973 Madrid, Spain) lives and works in New York City. In 2012 she was appointed Cultural Adviser to the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations. Her work, in the form of installation, drawing, photography and art projects, deals with what she calls contradictory truths, and the capacity to create a maximum by reversing a minimum. She has received a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, a MFA from the Academy of Art University, a BFA and MA from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Chelsea College of Art&Design, The London Institute. In 1995 she was awarded a Penagos Prize - Spain's National Drawing Competition, Mapfre Foundation, being the youngest artist and first woman to achieve such recognition. She is recipient of La Caixa and Peter Reed Foundation Fellowships, and was nominated by the Smithsonian Institution for a 2010 SARF. She has shown at the Guggenheim, Metropolitan, Queens Museum of Art and Bronx Art Museum in New York; and MANIFESTA