Natalia (Nika) Sorzano


With a BA in law and art, I began my career as a human rights researcher and policymaker, mediating between LGBTIQ+ activists and the Colombian government. This experience shaped my understanding of social justice, identity and relation—central themes in my artistic practice. I currently work in The Netherlands as a BA and MFA tutor, as well as a board member for Papaya Kuir, an activist organization supporting immigrant Latinx queer communities.

In my work I inquire how relations unfold and how they affect our subjectivities. Focusing on how belief systems and personal accounts are negotiated, I look not only at the subject, but at more-than-human species, material and mythic realms. I’m drawn to the symbols emerging from everyday interactions—how they affect bodies, objects, and spaces, often disguising underlying currents of violence, politics, and desire. Folding these observations into my work, I create realities through fantasy and concepts of the macabre.

Through conversations, workshops and fieldwork I organize with guests, I investigate how relations are enacted. These methods channel multiple voices, engaging with collective imagining and oral transmissions. Materiality, sound and performativity are in continuous dialogue in my practice. I use these sensorial mediums to communicate beyond the limitations of language. Together with the ability of sound and movement to shape a narrative, the results are fictional accounts that entangle individual subjectivities.

My relationship with material focuses on the presence and agency of everyday objects and spaces over how relations unfold. I work with mass-produced and found objects, transforming them through paint, collage and sculpture into symbolic objects and structures that give form and place to our collective imaginings. The results appear as playful immersive installations of mixed media where I re-signify material to provide alternative contexts for the narratives and sources of my research to co-exist in kinship and opacity.


Con un pregrado en Derecho y Arte, inicié mi carrera como investigadora y servidora pública en derechos humanos, mediando entre activistas LGBTIQ+ y el gobierno colombiano. Esta experiencia le dio forma a mi sentido de justicia social, identidad y relación, temas centrales en mi práctica artística. Actualmente trabajo en los Países Bajos como tutora de pregrado y maestría en Bellas Artes, además de ser miembro de la junta directiva de Papaya Kuir, una organización activista que apoya a las comunidades queer latinxs migrantes.

En mi obra, investigo cómo se despliegan las relaciones y cómo afectan nuestras subjetividades. Centrándome en cómo se negocian los sistemas de creencias y los relatos personales, no solo observo al sujeto humano, sino también a especies más-que-humanas, así como a mundos materiales y míticos. Me interesan los símbolos que emergen de estas interacciones: cómo afectan los cuerpos, los objetos y los espacios, revelando interpretaciones de violencia, política y deseo. Al integrar estas observaciones en mi trabajo, creo realidades a través de la fantasía y conceptos de lo macabro. 

Mediante conversaciones, talleres y trabajo de campo, estudio cómo se materializan las relaciones. Estos métodos canalizan múltiples voces, involucrando imaginación colectiva y transmisión oral. La materialidad, el sonido y la performatividad están en diálogo constante en mi práctica. Utilizo estos medios para comunicarme más allá de los límites del lenguaje. Esto lo mezclo con la capacidad del sonido y el movimiento para construir narrativas que dan como resultado relatos ficticios que hacen borrosas las subjetividades individuales. 

Los potenciales relacionales y afectivos de la materia son centrales en mi obra. Trabajo con objetos producidos en masa y encontrados, transformándolos mediante pintura, collage y escultura en objetos y estructuras simbólicas que dan forma y lugar a imaginaciones colectivas. Los resultados se manifiestan como instalaciones inmersivas y lúdicas de medios mixtos, donde las narrativas y fuentes de mi investigación coexisten en afinidad y opacidad.


Short Bio: 

Natalia (Nika) Sorzano is a Colombian artist based in Rotterdam, working primarily with mixed media installations (video, sculpture, and painting), music, and performances to video. With a BA in law and art, she began her career as a human rights researcher and policymaker, mediating between LGBTIQ+ activists and the Colombian government. This experience shaped her understanding of politics, dis/identity and relation—central themes in her artistic practice. She finished her MFA degree (cum laude) at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2016. She is co-founder of the facilitative platform GHOST and the queer artist-run community space Tender Center Rotterdam. She currently works as an educator and researcher at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and is a tutor for the MFA Monstrous Futurities of the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.  She is also a board member for Papaya Kuir, an activist organization supporting immigrant Latinx queer communities.

Her individual and collaborative work has been shown in spaces such as Rewire Festival (The Hague, 2025), Matadero (Madrid, 2024), Radius CCA (Delft, 2023), O Festival for Opera, Music, Theater (Rotterdam, 2023), Artspace (Sydney, 2022), TENT (Rotterdam, 2021), Montez Press Radio (New York, 2020), Veem House for Performance (Amsterdam, 2019), Salón Nacional de Artistas de Colombia (Bogotá, 2019), and MACBA (Barcelona, 2017).
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