Tony Vazquez Figueroa

Tony Vazquez-Figueroa (b. 1970, Caracas, Venezuela) is a Venezuelan artist whose work examines the cultural, political, and material consequences of oil and its role in shaping modern life. His practice is informed by an early background in film and advertising, disciplines through which he developed a sustained interest in images, persuasion, and the construction of collective narratives.

Vazquez-Figueroa received a BFA in Film from Emerson College and later pursued formal art training at the Escuela de Arte San Alejandro in Havana, the New York Studio School, and the Slade School of Painting at University College London. His experiences living and working in Cuba and Venezuela—particularly during periods of political upheaval, economic collapse, and the erosion of public institutions—have been central to the formation of his work. These conditions shaped an ongoing engagement with material culture, spectacle, and the structural presence of lack, as well as with the tension between what remains operative and invisible and what becomes suddenly exposed, disrupted, or present by way of that lack.

His work has been exhibited internationally, has received numerous awards in the visual arts, and is held in public and private collections including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Latin American Art, California, and the UNIS Museum, Guatemala. He lives and works between Miami and Mexico City.