Photo : Kim Low
Cesar Cueva’s practice begins with scale.
ABOUT
Cesar Cueva is an Australian artist and designer working across photography, objects, jewellery and installation. His practice operates between Sydney and the NSW South Coast, with his studio, The Future Artifact, based in Port Kembla.
Cueva’s practice begins with scale.
He is interested in what becomes visible when familiar materials are encountered at unfamiliar scales. Through processes of observation and exploration, he searches for structures that might otherwise remain unseen: lines, planes, fractures, surfaces, colour, light and void.
The camera has become central to this investigation. Rather than simply documenting a subject, Cueva uses photography as a tool for excavation. Scale becomes a way of entering material, light a way of revealing structure, and the resulting image evidence of the encounter.
His work does not begin with a predetermined image or object. Instead, Cueva creates conditions in which something can emerge. Material is selected and positioned, light and colour shift, the camera moves, and each change produces a response. Composition develops through an exchange between observation, control and chance.
Increasingly, Cueva is drawn to naturally formed materials that carry evidence of formation, pressure and change. Fractures, inclusions and growth lines become records of compressed time as well as points of entry into another scale.
This approach extends beyond photography. Across objects, jewellery and installation, Cueva’s work is connected by an ongoing investigation into scale, material and structure, and the relationship between what can be observed and what might still remain hidden.
Photo : Kim Low
BIOGRAPHY
Cesar Cueva is an Australian artist and designer whose practice moves across photography, objects, jewellery and installation.
Originally trained in industrial design and architectural technology, Cueva later studied photography and 3D animation. This movement between disciplines continues to inform a practice grounded in scale, material, structure and observation.
Alongside his independent practice, Cueva is co founder of Courtesy of the Artist, a contemporary jewellery house established in Sydney in 2004, and co founder and co director of Sevenmarks Gallery in Kiama. He is also a partner in BC House, a material focused showroom in Darlinghurst presenting fossils, minerals, gemstones and interpretive works.
Cueva works between Sydney and the NSW South Coast, with his studio, The Future Artifact, based in Port Kembla.
His current photographic work uses extreme macro photography and focus stacking to investigate structures that sit beyond ordinary perception. His 2026 solo exhibition HIDDEN LINES at Sevenmarks Gallery extends this investigation through scale, light and material, using the camera as a tool for excavation