Stefhany Y Lozano: Hands as Protagonist

Stefhany Y Lozano — Rock, Paper, Scissors series, 18 August 2026

Stefhany Y Lozano uses hands to tell the story. The Bogotá-born artist, described here on 18 August 2026, makes gestures and finger positions the emotional centre of her paintings and recent fabric work, turning small movements into whole narratives that viewers recognise instantly.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, 40 years ago, Lozano trained in product design before moving to Germany in 2010 on a scholarship and later taking an MA in arts and illustration at Burg Giebichenstein, studying under Georg Barber (ATAK). Her background in design shows in a pared-back process: fixed palettes, a few canvas sizes and custom rulers and templates used to compose work directly on the studio wall.

Hands recur across series and formats. In the Coqueta paintings she stages a hyper-feminine subject leaning into a tear-shaped mirror; in Intimidad Pública she explores the awkwardness of private moments exposed in public. A suite of close-up studies places the palm and fingers across entire canvases — nails painted flat graphic red — as part of Rock, Paper, Scissors, a project of 26 hand paintings Lozano sold one a day over Christmas.

"Hands, in particular, have become one of my favourite expressive elements." — Stefhany Y Lozano

That fascination comes from treating gestures as a language: a bent finger, a tense thumb or the way a hand shields a face shifts tone without a single facial expression. Lozano deliberately keeps faces subdued so posture and hand configuration carry the emotional load. For viewers, that makes her work immediate and transportable — you read the scene through movement rather than narrative detail.

Her practice is expanding. Lozano has begun using oil to bring skin texture into sharper relief and has translated painted motifs into soft sculpture. Notable is Chain of Unity, a 350cm fabric piece made for the Floating Curtains festival in Hamburg and Innsbruck, which pulls collage elements straight from the canvases into three-dimensional form.

Her paintings and illustrations have travelled to the Saatchi Gallery in London and galleries across Australia, Colombia, Spain, Germany and Mexico. For anyone who follows contemporary figurative painting or illustration, Lozano’s work is a useful reminder that a single hand can hold more drama than a full portrait.