Nela Ochoa

(1953, Caracas, Venezuela) is a multi-faceted artist who trained in design, painting and contemporary dance in Caracas and Paris. Ochoa’s work spans diverse media, such as video, installation, painting and performance, and focuses mainly on the human body and genetics, which she references through the use of forms of representations, such as X-Rays, taken from medical science.

Her work has been exhibited internationally in high profile events such as the exhibition The Final Frontier, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, in 1993, as well as ARCO Madrid, Video Box-Balelatina at Art Basel (Switzerland) and Art Miami.

Ochoa has also had several solo exhibitions at the Galería Sextante in Bogota, Colombia, as well as at the Frost Art Museum (2009) and Hardcore Art Contemporary Space (2008), in Miami.

She has participated in numerous group shows in Germany, Brazil and Spain, among others. Ochoa’s video installations have received a number of important awards in Venezuela, such as the Non-Object Art Prize at the Arturo Michelena Art Contest in 1987; the III Prize in the IV Merida Art Biennale in de 1997 and the Harry Liepienz Prize at the Arturo Michelena Art Contest in 1998.

Her works form part of the permanent collections of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum and Miami Art Museum, and the Video Data Bank at Chicago University, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, National Art Gallery and Alejandro Otero Museum in Caracas.

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