Bio
Pia Watson (b. 1984, Mexico) is an artist and actor based between London and Mexico City. She studied Arts & Literature at Simon's Rock College of Bard and Political Science at The New School in New York City before training as an actor at CEFAT in Mexico City.
Working across visual art, performance, film, and writing, Pia's practice explores identity, perception, and alternative forms of communication. Alongside her artistic work, she has worked professionally as an actor in film, stage, and television.
Her visual and performance work has been exhibited in Mexico and developed through international residencies and research in Europe and Asia.
Curriculum Vitae
Selected exhibitions & performances:
2026: Work in Progress, (collective exhibition and performance), Mexico City, Mexico
2025: No. 12, Salón Acme, Mexico City, Mexico
2024: Breath!, The Farm and Distillery Space for Contemporary Art (collective exhibition), Berlin, Germany
2024: Becket/TEOREMA, Centro Cultural Teorema (reading), Mexico City, Mexico
2020: Anni Albers: Del Diseño, Alias & Casa Luis Barragán (reading), Mexico City, Mexico
2020: Wordless Dialogue_b & _c, Casa Poligono (duo performance), Mexico City, Mexico
2019: Polígono Art Fair, Casa Polígono (collective exhibition and performance), Mexico City, Mexico
2019: Explorando Polígono, Casa Polígono (collective exhibition), México
2019: Naif, Centro Cultural Macario Matus (duo exhibition), Mexico City, Mexico
Selected films:
2025: Nada entre los dos, Juan Taratuto, Cimarron CIne, Uruguay
2024: At Midnight, Jonah Finegold, Paramount+
2023: Agathe, Thomas Van Altheimer, Pastor Projects, Denmark / Mexico
2022: 5 días en junio, Eduardo Rossoff, Changos Volando, Eva, Mexico
2019: Half Brothers, Luke Greenfield, Focus Features, Pamela, USA
2019: Conversaciones, Eduardo Clorio, Errante Films, Fernanda + Latrina, Mexico
Selected television:
2026: DOC, Francisco Franco, Sony, Colombia
2021: Amsterdam, Gustavo Taretto, HBO, Uruguay / Mexico
2019: Claramente, Alfonso Pineda, Once Once, Mexico
2017: Nada Personal, Fabián Corres / Javier Patrón Fox, TV Azteca, Mexico
2016: Rosario Tijeras, Alejandro Lozano / Chava Cartas, Teleset, Mexico
Selected stage:
2021: Así de simple, Jorge Seleme, Foro Lucerna, Mexico
2019: MAH, Alfonso Cárcamo, Dramafest, Mexico
2017: Rotterdam, Roberto Cavazos, Foro Shakespeare, Mexico
2017: Solo con ella, Mauricio Álvarez, Foro Shakespeare, Mexico
Writing:
2020: Una serie de malas decisiones y luego mi vida, novella, author, self-published
2018: Æther Trouble, Pysj, videoclip concept development and co-writing, Oslo, Norway
2017: Mañana es día del padre, TV Azteca, writer, 6-episode fiction series, co-writer, Mexico City, Mexico
2016: Luma: Historia del cine, Az Cinema, 13-episode documentary series writer & researcher, Mexico City, Mexico
Residencies:
2023: Dragon’s Nest Art Residency, Koh Samui, Thailand
2018: Gamme Artist Residency, Kabelvåg, Lofoten, Norway
Education & Acting Training:
2009 - 2013: BA in Acting for Film, Television, and Theater, CEFAT, Mexico City, Mexico
2001 - 2002: Arts and Literature, Simon’s Rock College of Bard, Alford, MA, USA
Additional Training:
2024: Lucid Body, Kennedy Brown, Mexico City, Mexico
2023: Voice + Rasas, Kennedy Brown, Bangkok, Thailand
2021: Darkness Visible, Performance, Ron Athey, Mexico City, Mexico
2021: Speaking Bodies, Movement, Alberto de León, Mexico City, Mexico
2018 - Odin Theater Festival, Odin Theater, Holstebro, Denmark
Artistic Research Studies:
2024: Therapeutic Hypnosis, Canada
2023: Tantra Mahamudra, Amrita, Greece
2022 - 2024: Taoism, Alchemical Meditation, Ontogony,(online)
2023 - 2024: Dreaming the Dreamer, Ontogony, (online)
2021 - 2023: Ontogonic Body-Mind Transpersonal Therapy, Canada
2020 - 2023: Shamanism and Healing, Ontogony, Mexico & Canada
Languages:
English: Native
Spanish: Native
French: Conversational
Hosting & Presenting:
2017: El Ariel, Host, Az Cinema, Mexico
2016: La Butaca, Host, Az Cinema, Mexico
Contact details:
Email & Phone:
watson.pia@gmail.com
UK +44 7342 386684
Artworks
THE SOLIDIFICATION PARADIGM
Pia Watson, 2026Single-channel video, color, 3:45 min
Presented at How Are Things? online symposium, organized by How Are Things Collective in collaboration with Unstaged Lab, 2026.
The Solidification Paradigm is a short video essay exploring the relationship between language, symbols, perception, and reality. The work incorporates footage recorded in Ladakh, Srinagar, and the Himalayan region of India, including imagery from Hemis Monastery. Beginning with the idea of the “thing” as a temporary solidification of movement, the piece examines how fluid processes become fixed forms, and how possibilities transform into perceived realities.
Drawing from speculative interpretations of quantum mechanics, contemplative traditions, and dreamwork, the work reflects on processes of differentiation, identity, and attachment as stages in which movement becomes hidden, ideas become fixed, and boundaries emerge.
Set against landscapes shaped by geological time and human-made divisions, The Solidification Paradigm examines the relationship between physical and conceptual boundaries—between forms, identities, and ways of perceiving reality. The creative process becomes an act of remembering the underlying fluidity of forms: the possibility that what appears solid may be a momentary state within a continuous field of transformation.
ORACULAR DANCE
Pia Watson, 2025
Oracular Dance
Pia Watson, 2025
Single channel black & white video on screen in wooden box
11:22
Pia Watson, 2025
Single channel black & white video on screen in wooden box
11:22
Oracular Dance is an ongoing performative body-unconscious exploration testing if a physical body can shed light to conflicts arising in a different body through a shared field of information. This piece has been shown as a series of offline performances in intimate spaces; for Salon Acme, the piece will be remade and presented as a single channel video loop with a set no of performance possibilities or “answers” based on 8 core movement frames. The video in this submission serves as an example of a previous session.
Drawing inspiration from Carl Jung’s work of the (collective) unconscious, adding the body as a pivotal component for solving trauma and conflict in Wilhem Reich & Carlos de Leon’s work, Oracular Dance highlights the urgency of reaching beyond ourselves and by connecting with the other, find solutions through a shared subtle space.
The spectator is encouraged to ask a question offering them the possibility of an answer through the video movement loop they happen to witness. A modern-day oracle, a movement I-ching, dancing tarot, or pure charlatanry, your choice.
Drawing inspiration from Carl Jung’s work of the (collective) unconscious, adding the body as a pivotal component for solving trauma and conflict in Wilhem Reich & Carlos de Leon’s work, Oracular Dance highlights the urgency of reaching beyond ourselves and by connecting with the other, find solutions through a shared subtle space.
The spectator is encouraged to ask a question offering them the possibility of an answer through the video movement loop they happen to witness. A modern-day oracle, a movement I-ching, dancing tarot, or pure charlatanry, your choice.
Oracular Dance_g
Pia Watson, 2025
Photography and ink on paper
59 cm x 42 cm
Pia Watson, 2025
Photography and ink on paper
59 cm x 42 cm
Divination is deeply intertwined with our fears, of isolation, the unknown, and ultimately, the fear of death. As humanity, we have sought for means of divination, ways to foresee the future, and answer questions that can potentially help us navigate the space-time we perceive as linear. Whether it be the Oracle of Delphi, Khandro-la, the State Medium of the Tenma Oracle in Tibetan Buddhism, or a tarot app on your smartphone, we’ve sought ways to find direction—a compass for love, success, or simply understanding the unknown.
Yet, are they all the same? Does the oracle’s success lie on the value we transfer onto it or upon subtle energies or divine beings? Modern deep psychology would claim it's a product of our personal unconscious pushing us to develop- that ultimately, answers are in our body.
The image for this submission is an ideological approximation of the piece, a series of 33 photographs taken from Oracular Dance (video piece) laid as values for divination + instructions on how to use.
KILLER EYES
David Cotterrell & Pia Watson, 2024
When communication breaks down and triggers are more common than kindness, words begin to fail. The conventions of conversation become traps for repetitive recriminations and looping accusations.
Small involuntary ‘tells’ remain as to the genuine moments of empathy, kindness and connection that are obscured by rhetoric. Subtle physical cues offer guidance to the rage that is suppressed beneath measured argument.
The mouth is the deliverer of ideas, but the eyes are what we seek to watch. At some point we can no longer bear to look. Scared to witness, genuine disdain, hubris or anger, we may no longer have the courage to discover whether they still reveal love.
Killer Eyes is the first piece of an ongoing exploration between artists David Cotterrell and Pia Watson, an artistic research interested in discovering what might reveal where connections falter in spaces where communication is necessary to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes between individuals or groups.
Killer Eyes is presented as a two channel video installation.
Small involuntary ‘tells’ remain as to the genuine moments of empathy, kindness and connection that are obscured by rhetoric. Subtle physical cues offer guidance to the rage that is suppressed beneath measured argument.
The mouth is the deliverer of ideas, but the eyes are what we seek to watch. At some point we can no longer bear to look. Scared to witness, genuine disdain, hubris or anger, we may no longer have the courage to discover whether they still reveal love.
Killer Eyes is the first piece of an ongoing exploration between artists David Cotterrell and Pia Watson, an artistic research interested in discovering what might reveal where connections falter in spaces where communication is necessary to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes between individuals or groups.
Killer Eyes is presented as a two channel video installation.
WORDLESS DIALOGUE
Eduardo Garcilazo & Pia Watson, 2022
Wordless Dialogue is an ongoing exploration of alternative communication methods, investigating whether subtle energy channels & psychic connections can be intentionally trained and exercised, rather than merely experienced as spontaneous phenomena. It challenges the limitations of written and verbal language, suggesting that these traditional forms, while intricate and beautiful, cannot fully express the complexity of human experience. By relying solely on them, we may overlook more effective means of conveying a richer message, especially when cultural bridges have been broken or gaps are too wide, leading to conflict.
The first experiment, Wordless Dialogue_a, was a 28-day wordless exchange between artist Pia Watson and composer Eduardo Garcilazo. Daily, a visual message sent at 7 a.m., with a sound at 7 p.m., though neither message physically reached the other. In Wordless Dialogue_b, Pia hosted online sessions where she mentally sent a colour for 15 minutes, and participants reported the colour they received, testing telepathic connections without physical contact.
Mixed media, digital sound and online performance
POINT & ECHO
Eduardo Garcilazo & Pia Watson, 2020Musical codes in visual art. Sound
structuring in synchronicity with the plastic expression. Music as impulse and
vehicle for subtle channels of communication.
Point & Echo is an interdisciplinary
project of sound, visual and performative creation between composer Eduardo
Garcilazo and artist Pia Watson that explores the synchronicity and coexistence
between sound and visual art.
An exercise allowing experimentation with
physical aspects of sound, such as consonance, rhythm, colour and resonance, in
an exercise of coding and classifying elements from the visual plane in a
series of concerts with visual and performative elements that, in symbiosis
with the spectator, attempt to put in evidence the existing and yet seemingly
invisible connections between human beings.
Garcilazo and Pia decode each other´s work to create sound and visual pieces that dialogue with one another in concerts incorporating visual and performative elements that, in symbiosis with the spectator, attempt to strengthen connections and “speak” from spaces perhaps even clearer and more profound than those of words.
Mixed media, digital sound and live performance.
Go to Point & Echo sound library.
Lux aeterna, mixed media, 100 x 70 cm, Pia Watson, 2019
Anachronic fuge, 3 km of 70 x 25 cm, thread and pencil on cotton paper, Pia Watson, 2019.
Listen to HOME STUDIO LIVE SESSIONS by Eduardo Garcilazo.
Decoding process for anachronic fuge.
Listen to POINTS by Eduardo Garcilazo.
