Tomás Ochoa (Cuenca, Ecuador, 1965) is a contemporary Ecuadorian artist whose work explores the relationships between historical memory, territory, identity, and violence. Through painting, photography, and material experimentation, he has developed a distinctive artistic language characterized by the use of gunpowder on canvas, a technique through which he transforms documentary images into artworks that reflect on the past and its consequences in the present.

Born in Cuenca, Ecuador, Ochoa has developed an international career and maintains a strong connection with Colombia, where he has lived and worked. His artistic practice investigates historical processes, power structures, and social transformations that have shaped different territories across Latin America.

Tomás Ochoa’s artworks are distinguished by a technique in which photographic images are enlarged and reinterpreted through the application of gunpowder grains onto a surface. Through controlled combustion, the artist transforms the material and reveals compositions in which both the image and its creation process acquire symbolic meaning. Gunpowder thus functions as both a pictorial medium and a reference to destruction, transformation, and memory.

In series such as Pecados Originales (2011), Ochoa used archival photographs related to historical and colonial processes to question official narratives and explore the traces of violence in the construction of collective memory.

His investigation of the Colombian landscape gave rise to Paraíso / Línea Negra, a project addressing territories affected by armed conflict and the relationships between nature, memory, and violence. The series was presented by Duque Arango Gallery in 2016 and received the EFG Bank & ArtNexus Acquisition Award for Best Artwork at ARTBO in Bogotá that same year.

Tomás Ochoa’s career includes participation in major international contemporary art events, including the Venice Biennale (2003) and the Singapore Biennale (2006), as well as exhibitions across Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

His exploration of imagery, materiality, and historical archives has established a distinctive approach within contemporary Ecuadorian and Latin American art, in which the artistic process becomes a means of investigating and reinterpreting memory.