Diana Urazán

One of my preoccupation as a painter is the wide range of visual possibilities that technology has given us. Everything is possible, the sky is the limit, and we can do anything we want, but it doesn't mean we should; it’s a personal preoccupation on today’s society. Technology gives us the liberty to do as we please with our food, appearance, nature, yet one of my concerns is that we are not living up to the responsibility of this freedom. This does not mean that my work is telling society how it should behave, but inside my little world, my work, my paintings, I can do as I please. With this in mind, I try to be responsible with what I paint, and how I paint it, keeping in mind the material, the subject, every single aspect, which guides the projects that I develop.

I consider what I can do, what I can accomplish, and if it’s worth the ambition or if it’s better to explore other simpler possibilities. Although my work is on a bidimentional surface, yet I’m always considering every possible aspect that it affects and the ones that affect it. The images are constantly a result of all the elements in my context and the time I am living in the moment of the production of the piece, but its true core is the following premise: "I know I can do it, but does that mean I should, and why?"

I was born in California, but both my parents are colombians, and all my life I have lived here in Colombia. I am 28 years, and I am a painter and a teacher. I gained my bachelor degree in the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, and I have lived for 4 years in the city of Cali since. I have been working on my painting very hard, and only began to show my work last year in a series of exhibitions in several cities in Colombia, Armenia, Cali and Bogotá. When I first moved to Cali, I started working as an english teacher in a kinder garden, and then as an art teacher, but I retired to work full time as a painter and promoting a cultural and artistical space called Casa Aislada, where we organize exhibitions and workshops to promote young art in Cali. Right now I have an ongoing project called An Exemplary Life, that uses the fairy tales imagery as symbols that altogether portray specific moments of my life. A first part of this project was shown in an independent lab in Bogotá and it will be shown completely in november of the present year in the Museum of Art in Armenia Quindío.