Ornella Ruiz Díaz
Painting as an expanded, mutable and inhabitable structure.
Statement
I conceive of painting as an expanded, mutable structure in permanent reconfiguration. My practice starts from colour and organic compositions that build a visual language of their own, where abstraction converses with pop imaginaries and painting overflows the traditional limits of its support.
In recent years my research has turned towards large-scale formats, understanding painting as a spatial, inhabitable experience. Suspended, folded or released from the stretcher, the canvas takes on an installative dimension that transforms the relationship between work, body and environment, producing immersive landscapes of a sensory and oneiric character.
In parallel, I explore the translation of painting into digital environments through phygital formats, blockchain technologies, metaverses, video games and extended reality experiences. I am interested in thinking of the work as an entity able to persist, adapt and take on new functions according to the contexts it passes through.
Performance is a constitutive part of my practice. Through actions that involve the production as much as the transformation or destruction of the work, I investigate permanence and disappearance, materiality and virtuality, control and chance. My work proposes to imagine new ways of inhabiting painting, understood not only as image but as a territory of experience in constant expansion.
Work
Large-format painting that leaves the stretcher and occupies floor, wall and ceiling. The canvas unfolds into space and the body enters it: the work stops being faced and starts being inhabited.
Bio
Visual artist working on large-format painting, spatial experience and emerging technologies, with works that move between physical and digital formats. She is a pioneer of crypto art in Latin America. Since 2021 she has investigated the possibilities of phygital art through performances and participatory experiences. Her collection The Room and the performance Burn Art Show, in which she turned paintings into digital assets through the symbolic burning of the originals, marked a turning point in her practice.
Her solo exhibitions include Beat Boutique at Picasso Gallery, Dubai (2025); IMPERIO at Galería Laboca783, Buenos Aires (2024); and Ascender sin Reglas (2022), a research project and thesis on artists and media. She has taken part in international festivals and exhibitions such as NFT.NYC (New York, 2023), Talent Land (Mexico, 2022), Otra Feria (Miami, 2020), ETH Latam and LABITCONF, where she presented the performance La Gran O.
Her work has been shown at institutions and spaces including Banco Ciudad, Museo Lucy Mattos, Galería Cecilia Caballero, Noor Royal Gallery, MIU Gallery (Camboriú, Brazil) and The Art Gallery. In 2025 she performed a live painting for the Monte Carlo Polo Federation together with Noor Royal Gallery, which belongs to the royal family of Dubai.
She received the Visionary Artist Award from HUG (2024) and production grants from the Argentine Ministry of Culture in 2017, 2019 and 2020. She was a recipient of the Escena Pública Residency and Project Creation Grant (2017–2018), as well as the training grant of Galería Laboca783 alongside artists from Düsseldorf, Germany. She currently works in her studio under the patronage of Centro Empresarial Central Park, in Barracas.
Performance
Performance is a constitutive part of the practice. Through actions that involve the production as much as the transformation or destruction of the work, the research addresses permanence and disappearance, materiality and virtuality, control and chance.
Actions
Projects
Digital art, crypto art and pieces for virtual environments. Painting translated into formats that move, are inhabited and circulate beyond the wall.
La Gran O
Animated painting · NFT · LABITCONF 2022
The performance turned into a digital piece: the painting is animated and minted on blockchain.
Tiempos Modernos
Walking dress · NFT
Painting on digital clothing: a garment that walks and exists only as a file.
Supercar GTA V
Video game · Crypto art
A car painted in her pictorial language, playable inside the game world.
El Jardín de las Formas
A creative exploration notebook to download, print and colour. It comes from the 2026 painting series and is shared free of charge.
Leave your name and email and we will send you the notebook as a PDF. Free distribution: printing and reproduction are allowed for personal, educational and non-commercial use, keeping the author’s credits.
Contact
Enquiries from galleries, collectors, large-format commissions, site-specific projects and Shop pieces.