2026 Civic Engagement, Community Service, and Community Organizing (CECSCO) Honorees

Maria Gaspar

A photo of Maria Gaspar, looking at the camera and slightly smiling. She is wearing a black, flowy V-neck top. Her dark brown hair styled in a bun with bangs framing her face. She is in front of a white wall and window with sunlight streaming in, leaving a shadow on the wall.
Maria Gaspar

Maria Gaspar is a Chicago-born, first-generation, interdisciplinary artist negotiating the politics of location through installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Gaspar’s body of work addresses issues of spatial justice to amplify, mobilize, or redirect structures of power through individual and collective gestures.

For the past decade, Gaspar has been recognized nationally for her multi-year projects that attempt to dismantle borders, transcend penal matter, and turn places of precarity into places of possibility. Formative works such as “Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall” and “96 Acres Project” include art interventions at the country’s largest single-site jail, the Cook County Jail, and in her childhood neighborhood.

Gaspar has received the Guggenheim Award for Creative Arts, the Latinx Artist Fellowship, the United States Artists Fellowship, the Frieze Impact Prize, the Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award in Art and Activism from the National Museum of Mexican Art, and other notable recognitions. The Art for Justice Fund has supported Gaspar’s projects, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, the Creative Capital Award, and the Art Matters Foundation. Gaspar has lectured and exhibited at venues including MoMA PS1, New York, NY; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA; and the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, FL.

Gaspar received her BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Maria’s work reminds us why art is necessary for social justice movements. Art, especially when created in the way Maria models, opens up our imaginations, connects us, makes us feel and understand in new ways, and compels us to act. Maria’s nominator wrote, “Maria’s work is always feminist informed, social justice focused, and community based.” GWS is proud to honor Maria Gaspar with the 2026 CECSCO Award!

Rey Wences

Rey Wences, looking at the camera and slightly smiling. They are in front of a blue and white floral background. They are wearing a long-sleeved light blue button down shirt and have short black hair.
Rey Wences

Rey Wences was born in Mexico City and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Rey grew up undocumented and became involved in community organizing after graduating high school. In 2009, they co-founded the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), an undocumented-led organization in Chicago that spearheaded the “Come Out of the Shadows” campaign the following year. By 2013, Rey and other local organizers created Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), a community organization focused on campaigns against deportations, immigrant detention, and the criminalization of immigrant communities in Illinois.

During their time as campaign organizer with OCAD between 2018 and 2020, Rey coordinated a coalition of grassroots organizations. They led the campaigns to Erase the Gang Database in Cook County and the City of Chicago. In 2019, the coalition successfully pushed the Sheriff to decommission the county’s gang database.

Today, Rey draws on 17 years of experience in grassroots organizing, direct action, and communications strategies with communities in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, and New Orleans to oppose the criminalization of immigrants. In 2020, Rey served as Director of Communications at Organized Power in Numbers (formerly Unemployed Workers United), a national organization focused on economic justice. By 2023, Rey returned to serve as Chicago’s First Deputy Mayor of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights under Mayor Brandon Johnson. Today, they lead the Deportation Defense efforts at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, where they support the expansion of the Illinois Rapid Response Network and the Family Support Network Hotline, which was instrumental in fighting back against federal immigration enforcement in 2025.

Rey’s nominator wrote, “Rey has been instrumental in galvanizing the undocumented student movement at UIC, in Chicago, and nationally. Rey exemplifies what community engagement and service look like. This award is a fitting tribute to their time at GWS and UIC, as well as the hugely impactful work they have done in terms of undocumented and immigrant rights organizing in Chicago and beyond.” GWS is proud to honor Rey Wences with the 2026 CECSCO Award!