CAMILA RODRIGO ARAMBURÚ
Camila Rodrigo Aramburú (b. 1987, Lima, Peru) is an artist who investigates the formal and conceptual tension between natural phenomena and constructed forms. Though largely self-taught, Aramburú’s practice draws on her background in graphic design and her engagement with a range of mediums, including oil, watercolor, and acrylic. Her current body of work, which she began developing in 2023, is defined by a rigorous exploration of mixed-media abstraction.
The genesis of this shift began with an intuitive impulse, sparked by a conversation with her mother on a beach. Inspired to fill a blank wall in her apartment, Aramburú embarked on a new trajectory, moving away from the figurative and surrealist illustrations of her past to focus on the formal principles of line, proportion, and balance. This interest was cultivated early in her life, having grown up in a family of architects where she was exposed to the clean lines and precise designs of her grandfather and father.
Aramburú’s methodology is rooted in a deliberate process of construction and deconstruction. She initiates her compositions with a gestural, intuitive base—a fluid layer created directly on the studio floor, which she considers an echo of organic, unmediated experience. This ground is then met with the imposition of robust, geometric structures. These forms, characterized by their precise and often weighty presence, are employed to represent the systems and architectures of contemporary civilization. The resulting dynamic—a powerful dialogue between the spontaneous and the systematic—is central to her work.
This formal language is most acutely articulated in her ongoing series, "Canto Rodado." The series is conceptually anchored in her childhood memories of walks along the coast of La Punta and her habit, which she continues with her own children, of collecting stones along the shore. Aramburú employs this tactile recollection as a point of departure, transforming the texture and color of river stones into a visual metaphor for memory itself. Each work becomes an exercise in rearranging and reconfiguring these forms, treating them not as static objects but as evolving constructs that resist stasis. She builds her surfaces with a diverse material vocabulary, including charcoal, paper, spray paint, sand, and wood, to create layered, textural fields that reinforce the complex relationship between the natural and the man-made.
Aramburú’s work has been featured in exhibitions in Lima, including the collective show Dimensión Variable (2024). This spring, she held her first solo exhibition, La Forma Resignificada at La Galería, an event highlighted in a feature article by El Comercio titled “Pintura ‘La forma resignificada’ en La Galería.” The article lauded her work as a meditation on the “minimal landscape” and the “lost paradise of childhood beaches,” and the significant milestone coincided with her participation in the Pinta Lima art fair.
