Biography​:

 

Colombian-American sculptor Olga Bautista’s work Campesinas [peasant women] The Conversation consists of several ceramic faceless female figures that symbolically suggest a lost and unrecoverable identity. The subject directly derives from her experience living as an immigrant in Ecuador, Uruguay and the United States where she has established a new life and identity. Individually wrapped in blankets, the pointy silhouettes of her figures also recall the Andean mountains. While the Chibcha culture of Colombia and the Inca culture of Peru are primary sources of her inspiration, she also acknowledges the impact on her art from American Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko and German Expressionist sculptor Ernst Barlach, whose abstract human forms are evident in Bautista’s figures. Believing in art’s active role in society, Bautista seeks to create art that will stir sensations in audiences and prompt them to actions and new creative thoughts, in relation to their own lives. For the past ten years, she teaches Art for High School students and is Founder-Director of the Perth Amboy Gallery.