Tomás Espina was born in Buenos Aires in 1975; as a child and adolescent, he and his family lived in Mexico, Mozambique, Santiago (Chile), and Córdoba (Argentina). In 1997, he moved to Buenos Aires to study painting at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón (now the Universidad Nacional de Arte, UNA), from which he graduated in 2005. He has been awarded grants from the Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA), United States (2004). Major prizes received include first prize at the sixth edition of Petrobras/arteBA, Buenos Aires (2009); third prize at Premio Cultural Chandon, San Miguel de Tucumán (2005); and second prize at Premio Fundación Banco Ciudad, Buenos Aires (2002). He was named Artist of the Year in 2009 by the Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte, and New Artist of the Year in 2002. In 2011, he participated in the MAC VAL residency in France and in Art Omi in the United States. He is an agent of the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (CIA). In 2010, Pira, a book featuring a selection of works produced from 2001 to 2010, was published. In 2018, he—along with Florencia Rodríguez Giles—was named a professor at Artistas x Artistas, an artists’ education program run by Fundación El Mirador, and at Programa de Artistas PAC.
At the invitation of Plataforma Fluorescente, curated by Matías Umpiérrez, and in keeping with a handbook commissioned to Paul B. Preciado, he and Natalia Di Cienzo presented El Retino es una Cula (Dramaturgia para una conferencia) in 2019 at the Festival Internacional de Dramaturgia, a co-production with the twelfth edition of the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires. His work forms part of the collections of the following museums in Argentina: the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires; and the Museo Nacio- nal de Bellas Artes Neuquén. It figures in the collections of the following museums in other countries: MAMCO – Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; MAC VAL – Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France; the CIFO Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, the United States; the Deutsche Bank; the Banco Supervielle. It is also found in numerous private collections in Argentina and abroad. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.