GALERIE ZBERRO

Stefania Tejada

Stefania Tejada (b. 1990, Tuluá, Colombia) is a Franco-Colombian artist based in Paris. Her multidisciplinary practice began in digital painting before expanding into oil on canvas, where she developed a symbolic figuration rooted in identity, memory, and feminine mythology. She is now beginning a sculptural body of work, extending her visual language into three-dimensional form.

Her work is held in notable private collections, including the Laurence Graff Collection (acquired through Christie’s, 2023), the Tunji Akintokun African Art Collection, the De Iorio Collection (Italy), the collection of Christiane Levett / FAMM – Female Artists of the Mougins Museum (France), and the collection of Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis (USA/Germany).

She made her secondary-market debut at Christie’s in 2023, in First Open: Post-War & Contemporary Art curated by Aindrea Emelife. The work was donated to support the development of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) and was acquired by Laurence Graff.

Tejada’s work has been featured in public art initiatives in London, New York, Milan, and Los Angeles, as well as in cross-disciplinary cultural collaborations such as the TEFAF documentary series Collecting with Intent, the global Hennessy × LeBron James campaign, and Coca-Cola’s worldwide Masterpiece series, where her work appeared alongside Andy Warhol, Edvard Munch, Vermeer, and Vincent van Gogh.

Her paintings stage female figures within lush natural environments, creating allegorical spaces where personal and ancestral memory converge. Through symbolic costume, vegetal iconography, and layered storytelling, she reflects on hybridity, displacement, and the multiplicity of womanhood — a narrative now evolving into sculpture as a continuation of her research on form, body, and myth.

She currently lives and works in Paris.

Stefania Tejada’s practice explores with acuity the complexities of the feminine experience, grounding her gaze in her place of origin while expanding it into a universal language. Her work interrogates the intersections of race, class, gender, and cultural memory, offering a critical reflection on identity, representation, and belonging. She has developed a pictorial language in which nature plays a central role: lush vegetation becomes a sacred metaphor for inner discovery, an untamed jungle that opens access to ancestral memory and reveals the spiritual forces that shape the self. Within these symbolic landscapes, her figures reclaim power and visibility, embodying a dialogue between self and community, past and present.

Tejada’s symbolic vocabulary is articulated through natural elements that act as visions, echoes, and coded messages, bridging personal memory with collective heritage. This exploration is enriched by her transnational journey, which deepens her engagement with questions of identity, displacement, and hybridity. With a background in design, advertising, and communication, and holding a BA in Fashion Design, she has developed a refined sensitivity to form, texture, and symbolism. In her paintings, garments transcend their aesthetic function to become visual and psychological devices, destabilizing social codes of power and restoring visibility to figures historically marginalized.

At its core, Tejada’s practice unfolds as a meditation on memory and on the enigma of womanhood. By distancing herself from her own image, she deploys symbolic masks and layered identities to revisit her narrative through a process that is at once spiritual, scientific, and emotional. Each painting emerges as an intimate act of reflection, a reconstruction of belonging, and a dialogue with origins—the mother, the mystery, the very beginning of life.

Stefania Tejada (née en 1990 à Tuluá, en Colombie) est une artiste franco-colombienne basée à Paris. Sa pratique multidisciplinaire a débuté dans la peinture numérique avant de s’étendre à la peinture à l’huile sur toile, où elle a développé une figuration symbolique ancrée dans l’identité, la mémoire et la mythologie féminine. Elle se lance aujourd’hui dans la sculpture, étendant son langage visuel à la forme tridimensionnelle.

Ses œuvres font partie de collections privées prestigieuses, notamment la collection Laurence Graff (acquise chez Christie’s en 2023), la collection d’art africain Tunji Akintokun, la collection De Iorio (Italie), la collection Christiane Levett / FAMM – Female Artists of the Mougins Museum (France) et la collection de la princesse Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis (États-Unis/Allemagne) .

Elle a fait ses débuts sur le marché secondaire chez Christie’s en 2023, dans le cadre de l’exposition First Open : Post-War & Contemporary Art organisée par Aindrea Emelife. L’œuvre a été donnée pour soutenir le développement du Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) et a été acquise par Laurence Graff.

Le vocabulaire symbolique de Tejada s’articule autour d’éléments naturels qui agissent comme des visions, des échos et des messages codés, faisant le lien entre la mémoire personnelle et l’héritage collectif. Cette exploration est enrichie par son parcours transnational, qui approfondit son engagement sur les questions d’identité, de déplacement et d’hybridité. Forte d’une formation en design, publicité et communication, et titulaire d’une licence en design de mode, elle a développé une sensibilité raffinée à la forme, à la texture et au symbolisme. Dans ses peintures, les vêtements transcendent leur fonction esthétique pour devenir des dispositifs visuels et psychologiques, déstabilisant les codes sociaux du pouvoir et redonnant de la visibilité à des figures historiquement marginalisées.

Au fond, la pratique de Tejada se déroule comme une méditation sur la mémoire et sur l’énigme de la féminité. En prenant ses distances par rapport à sa propre image, elle déploie des masques symboliques et des identités superposées pour revisiter son récit à travers un processus à la fois spirituel, scientifique et émotionnel. Chaque peinture apparaît comme un acte intime de réflexion, une reconstruction de l’appartenance et un dialogue avec les origines : la mère, le mystère, le tout début de la vie.