Iliana Ortega


Iliana Ortega is an international visual artist based in New York City. She holds a BFA from Guanajuato University and an MFA in Painting from the Yale University School of Art. Singular and mysterious beauty is the signature of Iliana Ortega, a visual artist who creates images of unusual natural drama, based on the innate strengths of the site she works from.
A graduate of Yale University School of Art, Iliana spent ten years using the language of site-specific installation by combining elements from painting and abstract drawing. Since 2010 Iliana has been specializing in photography, Using conceptual elements to influence her photographic procedures, as well as to integrate philosophical concepts about the way light behaves, Ortega continues exploring places in nature of exquisite beauty.
Despite her long stay in New York City, Ortega is committed to photographing sites in nature, the sea especially. Her photos derive their esthetic strength at least in part from her willingness to learn from past efforts, by the modernists especially. At the same time, the emotional intensity of her art makes her a contemporary artist of the first order. Ortega's work has been exhibited internationally, including Gene Byron Museum, Guanajuato Mexico; Higher Pictures Gallery, New York, NY; Interstate projects, Brooklyn NY; Vasconcelos Library, Mexico City; Diego Rivera Museum, Mexico City; Kunsthaus Santa Fé, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato Mexico; Glass Museum, Monterrey, N.L., among others. Ortega has received several awards including, most recently, the Edward F. Albee Foundation Artist Residency Fellowship in Montauk, NY.

List of Awards