Being born in a transit place of migrating people, such as Ciudad Ixtepec, Oaxaca, shapes Ezequiel Ortega’s identity, and helps him understand his art as a part of a collection of living experiences and attachment to his territory. That’s why, for him, growing as an artist begins from within, where sounds, sights, touch, and memories reside.

The Guigu Bi’cu river— the river of the dogs—, animals, and humans have accompanied Ezequiel Ortega throughout his entire artistic work. With the innocence of a child who never ceases to be amazed, he continues to express his art in lines and shadows, which also represent where he is headed.

His work stems from the need to externalize what is difficult for him to express in words; a testimony of the memory, the atmosphere, the skin, the figure, and the face. His talent has gone through various stages and processes, where what matters is the encounter of spaces to share; places where art questions, walks, and finds new approaches to keep his work current.

Ezequiel Ortega experiments with themes and techniques ranging from pencil drawing, oil and acrylic, to watercolor, and graphic arts, allowing him to show a way of belonging, identifying oneself, and returning to the origin.

In his work, we find current themes about his environment, as well as personal and collective experiences, such as the human spirit, the loss of identity, pain, war, and animal extinction, in which he seeks to capture the gesture of people and animals that, for the artist, it is where the expression of the soul is being embodied.

Rosenda Wilde