Artist Bio:
Diana-Sofia Estrada is a Guatemalan American visual artist/educator born in Houston, Texas. She received her BFA in Painting/Drawing and BA in Psychology from the University of North Texas and her MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts. Estrada’s work questions ideas of visibility and conversations to interpret everyday events through drawings, installations, performance, and animation. Estrada has exhibited her work internationally and nationally including Diaspora Vibe Gallery (Miami), Caltrans Museum (Los Angeles,CA), Alice Yard Space (Trinidad), Box 13 (Houston, Texas), at Artlab at the Smithsonian Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C., FairPlay at FairMarket (Miami, Florida), at Sam Francis Gallery (Santa Monica, CA) , and in Uncivil-War at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA. After 15 years of living and working on the West Coast, Estrada currently resides in Houston, TX.
Artist Statement:
Relational aesthetics, progressive educational pedagogy, cartoons, and non-hierarchical modes of community influence my artwork. My work has encompassed painting/drawing, performance, social practice, installations, and video animation. Looking to our immediate digital culture, personal sensorial experience, and practices to create community; my work looks to warn, reconsider, and interpret everyday events focusing on various modes of communication. Often using miscommunication and text as a prompt: an English and Spanish idiom-focused weather animation, a series of watercolor paintings depicting flooded government buildings and national monuments; contemplating the ideal space to be dreaming when real-estate is an issue in the form of an online media persona, and inviting others to physically deconstruct my artwork to bring communities together.
