Santiago Riaño is a Colombian contemporary artist whose practice explores the veil as both image and threshold. Working through concrete, clay, photography, image transfer, textiles, and symbolic objects, his work investigates memory, death, territory, ritual, and the hidden structures that shape perception.

His process often begins with overlooked surfaces, fragments, and atmospheres: weeds growing through concrete, urban stains, fog, ruins, mountains, family archives, and objects charged with time. Through these materials, Riaño creates works that exist between the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual, the intimate and the collective.

His first exhibition, Velos en concreto, Ruderales / Ruderal, Veils in Concrete, presented in 2023, explored ruderal plants, concrete, grids, denial, childhood, and the resilience of what grows outside imposed systems of order. In 2024, his second solo exhibition in Bogotá, Fárrago en lo urbano / Urban Farragos, examined the city as an unconscious archive of stains, cracks, posters, smog, and architectural disorder. Later that year, he presented Seventy Second and Zero, a body of work rooted in the páramo landscape of La Cumbrera, his father’s photographic archive, clay, fog, death, and spiritual thresholds.

Riaño’s work is deeply connected to material transformation. Concrete, clay, oxidized metal, veils, photocopies, and handmade surfaces become carriers of memory rather than passive supports. His practice is shaped by a search for what remains hidden beneath images, places, and inherited gestures. He lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. His upcoming exhibition Seventy Second and Zero will be presented at Ether Gallery, Tokyo, in 2026.