Originally from the Catholic capital of Guadalajara, Mexico, he currently resides in Naarm Melbourne, Australia. Ramírez completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University and an Honours Degree of Fine Arts at Monash University. He is represented by MARS Gallery.
Short Bio
Diego Ramírez is an artist with dreams, a writer with hopes and a facilitator with beliefs. He has shown locally at ACCA, ACMI, NGV, Gertrude Glasshouse, Westspace, Sydney Contemporary, Blakdot and internationally at Deslave (Mexico), Human Resources (US), Torrance Art Museum (US), Art Central (HK), and Careof (IT). He has curated at Gertrude Contemporary, Seventh Gallery and Dogmilk Films. Ramírez has written locally for Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art and Australia, Disclaimer, MEMO, un Projects and internationally with NECSUS (NL) and BLUE journal (US x FR). He was the director of Seventh Gallery (2018-2023) and sat many assessment panels for local, state and federal funding bodies. He is represented by MARS Gallery.
The Artist
Diego Ramírez works across a range of mediums. In 2026, he wrote an expanded novel called Bureausis for New26 at ACCA. In Performance Appraisal 2, at This Hideous Replica curated by Joel Stern and Sean Dockray at RMIT Gallery, he sub-commissioned a Cultural and Environmental Safety Audit by Eliki Reade to re-frame his videos on show.
Ramírez is also known for performance, like the black piñata filled with institutional confetti he broke in Contact High curated by Anador Walsh at Gertrude Glasshouse 2023. Or the comical audition for Buffy The Vampire Slayer in Lifenessless at West Space in 2019, as part of Ventriloquy curated by Joel Stern. A chapter of his novel Bureausis includes music sheets that Ramírez performs live in a variety of contexts.
In 2018, he screened a collection of his moving image works at ACMI in partnership with ACCA called Towards the Umbral curated by Annabelle Lacroix. He was part of the survey show Melbourne Now at the NGV with his video The Perfect Ever co-curated by recess in 2023. His films are shown internationally, participating in Terror En Lo Profundo curated by Deslave at Human Resources LA in 2018 and Unco curated by Ian Haig at Torrance Art Museum in 2013. Various international festivals have shown them also, such as EXiS, FILE Sao Pualo, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Kuala Lumpur EFVF, and Channels Video Art Festival.
His solo exhibition Vampires of the Earth in 2023 gained significant attention by consolidating his work with text, images, and objects. He went on to show some of these works at Sydney Contemporary with MARS Gallery later the same year.
The Writer
He regularly contributes essays, profiles, reviews and prose to a range of publications. Ramírez' writing practice often intersects with other areas of his work, exemplified by Bureausis: a novel originally exhibited as an artwork in 2026.
Some of his recent writing for institutions include a catalogue essay for Platform (2024) at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane and Jon Campbell in the show Speech Patterns (2022) at AGWA. In 2023, he wrote a polemic for Parallel Structures x Runway Journal called Tylenol killed your empathy to soothe a headache, and now you are progressive in the arts, which integrated his interests in managerial fiction. His arts criticism features in Art and Australia, NECSUS, un Projects, Runway Journal, Art Collector, Running Dog, MEMO, Art Collector, Art Guide, Blue Journal, Meanjin, Performance Review and Australian Book Review.
In 2019, he presented The Horrible Affair between a Sadistic Image and a Masochistic Text at West Space as part of WRITING&CONCEPTS, a lecture on the early relationship between his art and writing. The next year, he participated in Writing In The Expanded Field with ACCA x non/fictionLab. In 2022, he delivered a masterclass for the Digital Young Writers Program at the National Gallery of Australia.
He has spoken about his ideas on art and writing, on high profile media channels such as ABC and SBS. As well as conference presentations such as Dark Eden at Artspace, and Experimenta Social at ACMI X. In 2021, he participated on a panel for Print Screen at the National Gallery of Victoria, speaking about digital publishing.