Camila Villa Zertuche is a multimedia artist working in painting, drawing, and three dimensional design. Camila was born in Mexico City in 1996. She also grew up in Miami, FL. Camila graduated from the Cooper Union in 2020 with a BFA in Visual Art. She is currently working working towards her MFA at Columbia University. Camila’s work is heavily influenced by her childhood in Mexico and Miami, where she explored diverse natural landscapes with her three sisters, spoke Spanglish, and attended Catholic all girl school until she was eighteen. Her practice explores the intersection of identity, power, and representation, particularly as it relates to bodies of women and land. Camila is concerned with the ways global and local policies control the rights of both women and nature, treating them as resources to be exploited and extracted- influencing the way we represent and visualize their realities.

Camila’s femme figures with large eyes and lips reference her own childhood drawings and the hyper animated media we all consume. Camila uses layers of paint and washes to question how early aesthetic choices align with the broader social forces that shape women’s identities and our perception of the natural world. She is interested in how the simple gesture of putting the sun in the corner or having a doll like figure references our warped beliefs about these beings and their roles. Camila’s works serve as regurgitated representations.