Loriana Espinel is a Colombian artist based in Houston. Her painting practice develops through calligraffiti, combining calligraphy, typography, and graffiti. Her work investigates how humans organize life together, with research moving through human rights, language, laws, systems of representation, and conditions of encounter.
Her ongoing project, El Árbol de los Anhelos: Codex of Human Rights, is a body of large-scale paintings developed in relation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The project approaches the Declaration not only as a text, but as an agreement constructed across different histories, cultures, and ideas about how people should live together.
Her work with calligraffiti consolidated through Chiribiquete, a body of paintings developed through research into the rock paintings of the Colombian Amazon. Since then, her research has expanded to include letters and scripts, pictograms, asemic forms, geometry, and systems of notation for movement and sound. Painting remains at the center of a practice that also includes live painting, artist talks, installation, and public actions.
Espinel’s public practice includes Voy a escribir una carta, an ongoing project in which she studies legislation before the Colombian Congress and writes handwritten letters to legislators, using mechanisms of democratic participation as part of the work.
Espinel has also worked as an immigration process interpreter, facilitating communication for asylum seekers in legal contexts. Her background includes multimedia theater and large-scale installation, including projects such as Anaconda, which combines sculpture, sound, and spatial experience.
In 2025, she received support from Colombia’s Ministry of Cultures through the Colombia in the World/Diaspora program for the development of El Árbol de los Anhelos. In 2026, she was selected to participate in FORMA at the Escuela Experimental de Arte.