Piloya Irene is an artist and art teacher currently working between Kumasi, Ghana and Uganda. Piloya uses sculpture, painting and film to explore personal experience of displacement and its effects, memory and history in relation to place, identity and belonging. She has a Post Graduate Diploma in Art Education from Kyambogo University 2019, Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Fine Art and Design from Uganda Christian University 2016 and is currently pursuing a Master’s program in Painting and Sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.

Piloya is currently having a solo exhibition at Xenson’s Art space in Kampala in 2024. Piloya participated in documenta 15 as part of the blaxTARLINES collective that collaborated with Gudskul collective in Kassel, Germany. She was part of the GASTHOFF 2022 in Frankfurt Germany, where blaxTARLINES worked with Staedelschule and various international artists. Piloya is now part of collectively run art space in Kampala by curator Nantume Violet; UNDER GROUND Contemporary Art Space that runs international arts exchange program “Travel somewhere nice” that visited Ghana last year for an exchange program, where Piloya was among the artists that time. Piloya recently had a solo exhibition of a body of work There is Hope in the Tears of Separation in her hometown Gulu between November and December 2022. In 2021, she worked with CAI, a USA based organization that empowers the girl child in various parts of the world as an art consultant. In 2020, Piloya exhibited her painting Fearless at the UWONET annual celebrations of women’s day in Uganda. In 2018, her paintings featured the Okuki-women rising collectively through art reflecting on gender related struggles and successes.

She worked with Wajuku artists’ collective on a research project for the Research Centre Society of Groningen in Nairobi, Kenya in 2017. She was part of the History in Progress Uganda collective art project that depicted the Ekifananyi Kya Mutesa. In Ebifananyi 8 The king pictured by many curated by Andrea Stultiens and exhibited at FotoMuseum Antwerp, Belgium and Makerere Art Gallery in 2017. Piloya participated in the Surfaces, a conceptual drawing workshop and exhibition at Afriart gallery, Kampala 2017. She worked with Ancients Prints Ntinda, Kampala as a graphics Specialist by guiding the designers on how to execute tasks. She participated in the Parallel Portraits Project of course 2016 under the theme We, people in transition, exhibited at Academie Minerva Praediniussingel in Groningen, Netherlands. She exhibited her work Rebirth during the first Annual member's exhibition of 32° East; Ugandan Arts Trust in 2016 in Kampala. Piloya is a recipient of KAAD Scholarship for masters in sculpture for 2021 to study in Kumasi, Ghana and the Prohelvetia Artist Residency Program in Switzerland for 2024/2025