Santiago Ávila Albuja (Quito, Ecuador, 1993) is a visual artist and curator. He holds a B.A. in Visual Arts from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (2016), an M.A. in Cultural Theory and Criticism from Carlos III University of Madrid (2017), and an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from the University of Navarra (2022), completed with a scholarship from the Carolina Foundation. He is currently Director of the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito (CAC), appointed in 2026 and where he has worked since 2022. In this role, he oversees the institution’s curatorial and exhibition program while also coordinating the development of the Mariano Aguilera National Arts Award, Ecuador’s longest-running public program supporting the visual arts.
His independent curatorial practice focuses on artistic processes linked to queer identities from an ecosocial perspective, with a particular interest in collective, process-based, and experimental methodologies that support emerging artists. Notable curatorial projects include Función y Ficción (Colección Bergé, Madrid, 2022), Aeòn (CAC, 2024), Multiverso (CAC, 2024), and Ahora lxs llamamos (Arte Actual FLACSO, 2025). In 2024, he received the Getty
Foundation Travel Grant to attend the CIMAM conference in Los Angeles, and in 2025, was selected for the FLACSO-Ecuador Contemporary Art Curatorial Projects Award. His writing has been published in specialized art journals and platforms including Index Contemporary Art Magazine, Artishock, Post(s) Journal, and ARTEINFORMADO.
