About the Artist
Pinky Ibarra Urmaza (b. 1976, Manila; lives and works in New York City) is a mixed media artist drawn to objects with history–vintage books, old toy parts, and other flea market finds. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from De La Salle University, Manila and attended workshops at the MOWELFUND Film Institute. Always interested in storytelling, she worked on several film projects. In 2000, she moved to New York where she completed the full-time program at the International Center of Photography.
Her collages are inspired by childhood memories of ancestral houses, salvaged family heirlooms and remnants of strangers’ lives found in dusty photographs and stained pages. Through manipulating these materials by burning, tearing, painting, and mark-making, her work celebrates the discarded in the hope of breathing new life into these forgotten objects.