Patricia Torres Ortiz

Patricia Torres, known as Patricia Torres (born in 1963, Mexico) is a Mexican artist. She uses different forms of visual expression, such as painting, drawing, printmaking, multimedia pieces and video. The themes in her work are related to the female body, its acceptance and the interventions that are made to normalize it, to ensure that it is accepted and valued in society.
Her works present a limited range of colors, and are almost monochromatic. In her paintings, the body appears surrounded by the objects of daily life, medical instruments or organic elements such as grass or hair.
Her pictorial work highlights the biological function of the body, as well as perception through the senses. She incorporates images of human organs, such as the intestine and kidneys, or of different bones, such as the spine and ribs; in some paintings, there exists a dividing line whose function is to create a circular reading, one in which the planes are inside of each other. Her iconographic discourse constitutes a reflection on the private (biological) life and the public life of the female body. Because of the feminist nature of her work, it is included as part of Archiva, an archival project by Mónica Mayer about Mexican artists.
She was simultaneously enrolled in high school and the studio arts program plastic arts directed by the Cultural Diffusion Directorate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In 1982, she entered the Bachelor of International Relations program at UNAM. At the same time, she studied mural painting, screen printing and drawing at the National School of Studio Arts, at UNAM's Academia de San Carlos (ENAP).
She was Arnold Belkin’s student in an educational program related to photo applications in painting (1988) and one on muralism in (1984–86). From 1983 to 1985, she was his assistant in the completion of three murals. Patricia Torres led a group of students in the painting of the murals made at the Colegio Madrid from 1985 to 86.
She finished a Web Design certificate and a Mono Prints certificate at San Francisco State University, where she would ultimately earn her B.A. in Studio Art in 2008.
In 1983, after participating in the Arte y Feminismo workshop, taught by Mónica Mayer in the postgraduate course at ENAP, Torres Ortiz collaborated in the formation of one of the first groups of women artists in Mexico called Tlacuilas y Retrateras, which organized La fiesta de quince años, a performance event at ENAP.
At the invitation of Mónica Mayer, Cecilia Sánchez Duarte and Patricia Soriano, in 1993 she participated in the exhibition Las santas del oficio, which was organized by the Pinto mi raya collective, and where works by more than 20 Mexican artists were exhibited.
Patricia Torres is one of the Mexican feminist artists (militant or not) selected by the Archiva project, whose objective is to make the artistic work of women visible. Her artistic record is illustrated with the piece Body, from 2012. The painter herself affirms that in this piece she works the idea of the female body without representing it, thus avoiding the act of converting it into an object.
In 2015, she taught the Guest Artist Workshop "Silk screening as a diversifying element in contemporary art," at the National School of Painting, Art and Printmaking "La Esmeralda", at the National Institute of Fine Arts.
Highlighted works include: