Pilar Agüero-Esparza is a mixed media artist working in painting and spatial processes through which she explores issues of colorism and social hierarchies while engaging with ideas of materiality, meaning, and the handmade object as entry points for discussions on race, equity and empathy. She received a BA in Art from the University of California Santa Cruz, and MFA in Spatial Art from San Jose State University. Agüero-Esparza has exhibited her work in numerous institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Triton Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, MACLA, Palo Alto Arts Center, Galeria de la Raza, the Lawrence Arts Center, the De Young Museum, Cabrillo Gallery at Cabrillo College, and the Montalvo Arts Center. In 2017, her work was featured in the exhibition “The U.S.-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility” at the Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles as part of the Getty Foundation Southern California initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art. In 2022, as an artist-in-residence and Lucas Artist Fellow, she was commissioned to create a large-scale outdoor work for the exhibition “Claiming Space: Refiguring the Body in Landscape” at the Montalvo Arts Center. Currently, she is working on a series of large-scale leather paintings as part of her upcoming exhibitions at the San Jose City College Gallery and the Santa Clara University Art Gallery. Upcoming in 2025, Agüero-Esparza will receive the prestigious Eureka Fellowship Award from the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco.