Pilar Lagos is a visual artist, born in Santiago, Chile and raised between Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Cairo, Egypt. She has also lived in Japan and France, and is currently based in Long Island City, NY.

Pilar’s interest in the nuances of written and visual communication led her to pursue a B.A. in Communications and Advertising from Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana (Honduras, 2007) and an M.A. in Journalism from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2011).

Following her studies, Pilar began to work at various international organizations, honing her written and graphic design skills. In 2021, she’s turned her focus to visual arts and has taken design and art courses at the School of Visual Arts, University of the Arts London, New York Studio School, The Art Studio NY, and NYC Crit Club.

Who we are, who I am, is deeply intertwined with the body we were born with, and the place God or fate or karma or chance has thrown us.

I have lived most of my life abroad, in countries and continents that are not my home, speaking languages my parents didn’t teach me, eating food, smelling scents, and dressing for climates that still feel strange. Yet, I have found a place to belong, people to love, and a life to build.

Painting gives me the freedom to express these experiences, using intuition, observation, and memory, while exploring the space between alienation and longing. Being more comfortable as a foreigner abroad than in my native country; I often feel estranged from my own culture and body.

Still, I deeply love and long for the country of my roots, it’s not a coincidence that I incorporate found materials and pressed flowers from my country in my paintings. 

My admiration for people battling invisible illnesses has inspired me to collage wrappers of medications in drawings as a way to confront and refute the shame that comes with living with a medical history.

I use bold color combinations in response to my fascination with the richness of colors that we find in nature. I like to use space as the foundation to explore inconclusive conversations disrupted by  change. I find inspiration in color field paintings, because they give me a sense of repose. Abstraction lets me organize the chaos within. I also have a deep fascination for light that forms patterns as a result of the reflections on man-made structures. I am constantly chasing these organic compositions in the serendipitous moments of daily life. 

As an artist, I want to continue exploring abstraction to investigate and represent experiences—past and present— with the hopes of connecting with others.