R-TRONIKA

Visual artist and musician Renzo Ortega was born in Peru in 1974, and grew up in Lima during a time of civil war, kidnappings, and constant violence.After an adolescence spent deeply involved in the city’s underground punk and street artist subcultures, he studied painting at La Escuela Nacional Superior Autonoma de Bellas Artes de Peru—a university where the art-making process was closely entwined with young Peruvians’ struggle for social justice and free expression under then-dictator Alberto Fujimori.In 2000 he came to New York City, where he continued his studies through a merit scholarship at the Art Students’ League. He quickly became part in the New York’s arts community, in part through his involvement with Local Project, a Long Island City-based artists collective.Other current projects include No Violence Music and the Resistance Music Festival, a series of concerts Renzo has organized and seek to promote peace and social consciousness among youth; and R-Tronika, a politically-conscious, multilingual music project which Renzo fronts as a singer ,keyboardist and classical guitar player.Renzo is working in his first long play to release in 2008.