'Fernanda Cortes is a Mexican/Italian artist known for her sculptural works. She has a foundation in Product Design at The National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 2013, she was an exchange student at the ENSCI Les Ateliers: École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris. As she approached the end of her undergraduate studies in 2014, she was awarded a scholarship that led her to Canada. At the Université de Moncton Faculté des Arts Visuels, she wrote her dissertation titled ‘A Compendium of Mexican Cooking Utensils’. This academic year not only deepened her understanding of art but also ignited a profound love for sculpting. She pursued further education at the Royal College of Art in London. She was honoured to be granted the RCA Innovation Scholarship, which allowed her to immerse herself in the Ceramics & Glass Department for her MA programme. Her MA dissertation was titled ‘Clay and Suicide’. She explored and defined how the process of making is nourished by our life experiences, even those that can be perceived as brutal are fruitful for inspiring the process of making. She completed her MA in 2016.

As a sculptor of anthropomorphic medium-sized ceramic figures and the writer of their stories, her themes explore human moral dilemmas. She creates characters that traverse psychological states and navigate overwhelming emotional density, questioning the dehumanisation inherent in the human condition, a sort of contemporary mythology. She aims to explore how narratives shape mental imagery, and the skill required to transform them into sculptures enriches her storytelling. She rents a private studio space at Sculpture Lounge in Holmfirth, and she also teaches at the University of Leeds in the School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies, as well as at Sunken Studio in Leeds, where she shares her expertise in throwing, hand building, and casting techniques. Balancing her own artistic pursuits with teaching responsibilities, she actively contributes to the ceramics community.'