Honys Torres

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Who is Honys Torres?

Honys Torres (Caracas, Venezuela, 1969) is a visual artist and editorial producer whose interdisciplinary practice combines Neo Pop creation, artistic research, curatorial work, and graphic design. Her work examines how symbols from popular culture—monuments, fictional characters, media icons—shape contemporary ideas of power, beauty, and identity. She works across painting, photography, sculpture, and drawing, developing a visual language where color, irony, and symbolic critique intersect with a sensibility deeply connected to the migrant experience.

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Alongside her artistic production, Torres conducts curatorial research and has organized exhibitions and cultural projects in Venezuela and Europe, integrating critical thinking with cultural management. Her editorial work includes the creation of artist’s books, experimental publications, and editorial objects, where graphic design and printmaking—fields in which she has received awards—become conceptual and narrative tools.

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Since 2018, she has lived and worked in Zurich, Switzerland, where she continues to expand a practice that weaves together art, publishing, and cultural reflection, developing projects that navigate the political and the intimate, the playful and the solemn.

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Education and Early Career

Honys Torres studied Law at the Central University of Venezuela, one of the country’s most important academic institutions, where she developed a deep interest in the social, political, and symbolic dynamics that would later inform her artistic practice. In parallel, she pursued studies in Computer Science in Venezuela, expanding her understanding of systems, logic, and contemporary visual languages.

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She later completed postgraduate studies in Organizational Development at the Andrés Bello Catholic University, a training that strengthened her analytical approach and her interest in cultural and social structures.

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Her formal engagement with art was shaped through extension courses in Volume and Drawing at the Armando Reverón School of Visual Arts in Barcelona, Venezuela, where she deepened her understanding of material processes and the fundamentals of representation. She complemented this with studies in Museography at the National Museums Foundation of Venezuela, gaining tools for exhibition design, conceptualization, and installation.

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Throughout her career, her artistic research has led her to take various courses and seminars in art history, contemporary art, cultural management, and cultural practices, consolidating an interdisciplinary formation that integrates critical thinking, visual production, and an institutional understanding of the artistic field. This combination of academic studies, technical training, and theoretical exploration supports the complexity of her current practice.

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Artistic Trajectory

Honys Torres’ artistic trajectory unfolds between Venezuela, Germany, and Switzerland, shaping a practice grounded in the intersections of art, visual culture, and critical inquiry. Her work emerged in the late 1990s, when she began exploring popular culture as a symbolic territory from which to question narratives of power, stereotypes, and the social construction of beauty.

During her time in Germany (2002–2006), her work absorbed influences from European Neo Pop, expanding her use of color, composition, and the appropriation of media icons. This period strengthened her interest in monuments, fictional characters, and collective imaginaries as devices of identity and cultural control.

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Upon returning to Venezuela in 2006, she developed a body of work that combines painting, photography, sculpture, and drawing, integrating irony, critique, and symbolism. Since 2008, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions alongside leading Venezuelan artists, and her work has entered public and private collections nationally and internationally.

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In parallel, Torres expanded her practice into artistic research and curatorial work, organizing exhibitions and cultural projects that resonate with her own visual investigations. Her experience in graphic design and printmaking—fields in which she has received awards—became a natural extension of her artistic language, allowing her to produce artist’s books, experimental publications, and editorial objects that function as artworks in their own right.

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Since 2018, she has lived and worked in Zurich, Switzerland, where she continues to develop an interdisciplinary practice that weaves together art, publishing, and visual thought. Her recent projects delve into the relationship between migrant memory, popular culture, and representation, constructing narratives that move between the political and the intimate, the playful and the monumental.

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Current Work

Honys Torres currently lives and works in Zurich, where she develops an interdisciplinary practice that brings together visual art, research, editorial production, and graphic arts. Her recent collections merge political reflection, multicultural experience, and color as a language of resistance and memory.

In recent years, she has participated in internationally relevant projects and exhibitions. She took part in Heidi in Lateinamerika, an exhibition organized by HEIDISEUM and presented at the Predigerkirche in Zurich, where artists from Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, and Mexico explored the cultural impact of the Heidi myth in Latin America. This project positioned her work within a contemporary intercultural dialogue.

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In Zurich, she also presented a solo photography exhibition at MATERIAL, a Verein dedicated to experimental practices and contemporary visual processes. She participated in FATart Fair, the first and only art fair in Europe dedicated exclusively to FLINTA artists, a high‑visibility platform that promotes the presence of women and non‑binary creators in the Swiss and international art scene.

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Her work has been recognized in Switzerland as a finalist of the Swiss Art Project, a platform that highlights emerging and established contemporary proposals within the country’s artistic ecosystem.

At the same time, Torres maintains an active relationship with the Venezuelan art scene. She received the Luisa Palacios Graphic Arts Award at the National Art Salon Elsa Morales for her series Crónicas de la Piedad Reloaded, noted for its critical, vibrant, and contemporary visual language. She also participated in the Arturo Michelena Salon, one of the most prestigious art events in Venezuela, which brings together selected artists from across the country. This continued presence reaffirms her connection to her country of origin and her commitment to Venezuelan cultural production.

From Zurich, she continues to expand a practice that interweaves migrant memory, popular culture, and visual critique, developing projects that move between the political and the intimate, the playful and the monumental.