Pia Ortuño

Pía Ortuño (b. 1996, San José, Costa Rica) lives and works in London. Trained in traditional marble and bronze techniques in Italy, where she apprenticed under sculptor Jiménez Deredia in the Carrara region, Ortuño works across painting, sculpture, and installation, developing a method she describes as painting by carving. Hand-chiseled wooden panels are worked with natural pigments, industrial materials, and decomposing metals, the chisel marks disrupting the surface to form planes of light and color. Her practice is directed by the Costa Rican landscape and customs, from pre-Columbian spiritual rituals to post-colonial religious iconography, and by the split sense of belonging produced by distance from her homeland. Her exhibition Ceremonias at Make Room, Los Angeles (2025), her first solo presentation in the United States, drew on the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe to consider how images and beliefs mutate as they move between cultures.

Ortuño received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2022) and a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Costa Rica (2019). Solo exhibitions include Ceremonias, Make Room, Los Angeles (2025); Down to the Roots, Cadogan Gallery, Milan (2025); The Day of His Wrath, Duarte Sequeira, Portugal (2024); and A Blue Fire, Incubator, London (2022). Group exhibitions include Into the Woods, Make Room, Los Angeles (2025); Across the Pond, Eric Firestone Gallery, New York (2024); In Continuity, Sherbet Green, London (2024); Marking Time, Cooke Latham Gallery, London (2024); Matter, Flowers Gallery, London (2023); New Ancients, Guts Gallery, London (2023); Books and Things, Helen J Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); and Shadows, Stables Gallery, Switzerland (2022). In 2025 her work was presented at Frieze Seoul.