Violeta Ayala (Australia)
Co-Founder
UnitedNotions Film

Violeta Ayala is a filmmaker, technologist, writer, and artist.

In 2020, she became the first Quechua member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars). She is the co-founder of unitednotions.film and koa.xyz, and her most recent project is the interactive VR animation Prison X (2021), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes XR to critical acclaim.

Ayala’s films, including Cocaine Prison (2017), The Fight (2017), The Bolivian Case (2015), and Stolen (2009), have premiered at major film festivals such as Sundance and Toronto, and have been broadcast on various platforms including PBS, Channel 8, SeƱal Colombia, Ibermedia, and Amazon Prime. She has received over 50 awards and nominations for her work, including a Walkley (Australia’s Pulitzer) and nominations for the IDA (Los Angeles), Rory Peck (London), Platino (Panama), and Fenix (Mexico).

In addition to her film work, Ayala has created a number of artworks, including Flower Queans (a book of 3D-printed flowers and poems), koa.xyz (an ever-changing interactive website), a metaverse gallery in voxels (winner of the overall honourable mention at the Indigenous Futurism Model-Making Competition of Yale’s center for architecture), and Ephemera (an online zine where she writes about futurism). She has also used AI to create Las Awichas (grandmothers in Aymara), a series of large-format prints in honour of her female Quechua ancestors, which were exhibited at the Martadero, one of the most prestigious art galleries in Bolivia.