Diego Pizarro — Everyone Can Be a Superhero
2 August 2025 — 31 August 2025
Diego Pizarro, Super Lazer Camera Guy, 2025. Silver gelatine print with posca pen, 11 × 14 inch
If you had to choose a superhero power, what would that be? Fly? Time travel? Being the Incredible Hulk? Or do you have a superhero power inside you that you didn’t realise you had already? Like the way that you drink a coffee, or the way you can light a room with your smile?
In this photographic and hand drawn series, Everyone Can Be a Superhero, Diego Pizarro puts forward this question to his community of disabled artists, giving them the opportunity to imagine themselves as a superhero in another dimension or acknowledging their already existing super powers in their everyday lives.
Each portrait has been taken at Arts Project Australia & Footscray Community Arts, Artlife, using Diego's portable backdrop. Diego has photographed this entire series using black and white medium format film, developed at Hillvale in Brunswick, and then hand printed at District Darkroom in Coburg. Diego then brings these portraits to life by drawing their superhero powers on the prints.
With Diego's abstract and hyper-coloured interpretation of their powers, you get to see a glimpse of Diego’s relationship with his friends, his visual response to their personality, and the sense of play in how he relates to the world around him.
Install
Diego Pizarro is a Naarm/ Melbourne based artist with a disability who works with analogue photography, drawing and painting. Diego draws strong inspiration between Marvel/ DC comics and his visualisation of sensory colours and patterns. Superhero comics are a recurring theme throughout his practice. Diego commonly creates his hero figures in an abstracted manner, using multiple bright colours and patterns to interpret the form of his characters. From 2019-2024 Diego received an artist residency at Artlife, Footscray Community Arts (FCA), where he exhibited, “Electric Man”, which was programmed for the “Neighbourhood Contemporary Art Festival” hosted by The Substation & FCA. In 2024 Diego was a finalist of “The Bowness Photography Prize” at the Museum of Australian Photography where Diego exhibited a print from the series, “Everyone Can Be a Superhero”. Diego Pizarro continues to work on his practice between Footscray Community Arts, Artlife and Arts Projects Australia.