Paula Otegui
Bio
Paula M. Otegui
Buenos Aires, 1974
Lives and works in Buenos Aires. Bachelor of Visual Arts. National Professor of Painting and Printmaking, UNA (National University of the Arts), where she also completed postgraduate seminars with Professor J. C. Romero. Workshops with S. Gurfein, A. Moccio, and M. Gásperi. Currently a thesis candidate in the Master's Program in Contemporary Latin American Aesthetics at UNDAV (National University of Avellaneda). Between 2020 and 2022, with the support of Cultural Patronage, she developed the project "Portable Museum," a book/installation donated to museums and libraries in Argentina.
Main awards and distinctions: 3rd Prize for Painting, M. Belgrano Salon, Sívori Museum, 2021; 1st Prize, National Drawing Biennial, Franklin Rawson Museum, San Juan, 2019. 1st Prize, Visual Arts Competition (Drawing and Painting), FNA, Casa V. Ocampo, 2016. 1st Prize, Young Artist, Central Bank of Argentina, MNBA, 2009; Grand Prize, Young Talent, 3rd Edition, Painting Prize, UADE University, 2008; 1st Prize, Young Painters, Hebraica, 2007; Honorable Mention, Painting, SNAV Palais de Glace, 2014, among others.
In 2023, she completed a residency at Pouch Cove, Canada, and in 2017 at Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, with the support of the FNA. This institution awarded her the Visual Arts Creation Grant in 2015 and 2023. In 2013, she received a living grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, and the Metropolitan Arts Fund, City of Buenos Aires.
Solo exhibitions: Huma Gallery, Los Angeles, and Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts Gallery, Miami, USA. In Buenos Aires: Bustillo Banco Nación Gallery, Osde Foundation, Pabellón 4 Contemporary Art Gallery, Borges Cultural Center, Praxis International Gallery, and Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts Gallery, Miami, USA, among others.
Her work has been selected by various juries and she has participated in group exhibitions, including: Horizonte Vazado: Ibero-American Artists on the Edge, Cervantes Institute, São Paulo; National Painting Salon, Banco Nación Argentina Foundation, National Bicentennial House, Buenos Aires; Klemm Foundation Prize, Buenos Aires; El Cambio, Latin American and Caribbean Artists, World Bank Artists Program, Washington, D.C. In 2015, she was invited to participate in the Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Art Museum of China and in "What is Hispanic?" at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Participation in International Art Fairs: Swab Contemporary Art, Barcelona; Chaco, Chile; MIAArt Fair, Pulse, Pinta and Scope Miami, Art Bo, Bogotá, Pinta London, Parte São Paulo, Art Fiera Bologna, Art Lima Peru, Arte BA Buenos Aires, etc.
Institutional Collections in Argentina: Timoteo Navarro Museum, Tucumán; René Brussau Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, Resistencia, Chaco; Franklin Rawson Museum, San Juan; Central Bank of Argentina, Buenos Aires; Hebraica Society, Buenos Aires; UADE, Buenos Aires; Copime; Isev, Buenos Aires. In the USA: Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee; and the National Art Museum of China. And private collections in Argentina, Paraguay, Spain, Colombia, the USA, Italy, England, etc.
Statement
Paula Otegui: The Garden of Infinite Layers (Theme: Nature as Deity)
Paula Otegui's painting is presented at Kokamama as an immeasurable visual tapestry, where the gaze is lost and found in a jungle of signs. For this exhibition, the artist creates an expanded painting that transcends the wall, with layers that advance like fragments and invite, in a powerful wink, the viewer to unravel the painting. There is no emptiness in her work; there is an impulse to fill the surface with overlapping stories, as if each brushstroke were a geological stratum of American memory.
Otegui constructs a cartography where the natural and the cultural hybridize, reminding us that the land we inhabit is a palimpsest of struggles, myths, and desires.
Daniel Fischer 2025
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
