Carolina Muñoz (Santiago, 1985)

Carolina Muñoz is a Chilean visual artist whose pictorial practice draws from both art history and her everyday surroundings. Her approach to new figuration merges historical references with urban scenes to explore gender, sexuality, and the emotional tensions of contemporary life. Through the lens of the grotesque—understood as a flexible and critical territory—she pushes the figure beyond its conventional limits, creating vibrant compositions that oscillate between the ordinary, the fantastic, and the unsettling.

Her work is informed by influences such as Goya, Bosch, Brueghel, James Ensor, Surrealism, the underground comics of Robert Crumb, as well as Philip Guston and Henry Darger. From this intersection, she builds an expressive painting practice that sustains a constant friction between tradition and experimentation.

Muñoz has exhibited in institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), the Museum of Visual Arts (MAVI), the Museum of Modern Art of Chiloé (MAM), Sala de Arte CCU, and the Centro Cultural Las Condes, as well as in exhibitions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, New York, Istanbul, and Madrid. In 2024, she received the CCU Art Scholarship and completed a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. She has been a finalist in national and international competitions and has participated in residencies such as LA EMBAJADA (Madrid, 2023) and Proyecto URRA (Buenos Aires, 2020).

Her work appears in publications such as Sub30 (2014) and Ojo Andino Chile (2015). It is part of institutional and private collections in Chile, Argentina, the United States, France, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Singapore. She lives and works in Santiago, Chile.