Valerie Ann Bugmann was born in Bogotá. She studied Fine Arts with a focus on New Media at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, graduating in 2002.
In 2005 she completed a master’s degree in Art and Technology at Chalmers University and the University of Information Technology in Gothenburg. In 2006, she joined the Z_node PhD program from the University of Plymouth (UK) and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.
Her artistic practice brings together diverse areas ranging from visual arts to new media and robotics. She often uses media like photography, video, interventions in public spaces, interactive mechanical objects and performances.
To her, art reveals itself as a great tool for exploration, like a kind of laboratory. It allows for the investigation of all kinds of ideas or technical tools that can be explored or experimented with on both a personal and collective level. Some of the themes she explores through her work are the performativity of language, the reconfiguration of our sensorium through the use of technology and the way we relate to mechanically animated objects and robots
Her work has been exhibited in various galleries in Colombia, Sweden, and Switzerland. She has participated in festivals such as Digital Artweeks Zurich, Picnic Festival Amsterdam, and Festival Internacional de la Imagen Colombia.
In 2009, she received a research scholarship for theatre studies from the Institute for Performing Arts and Film at ZHdK Zurich and, in 2006 and 2008, a production scholarship for digital art from Sitemapping, Swiss Federal Office of Culture.
In addition to her artistic practice, in 2023 she founded her own line of glass jewellery called Cardamomo.
She lives and works in Switzerland and Colombia.