Installations |
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2026
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Una Patoja y Una Chapina
Installation, garments, and video works San Jacinto College Central Art Gallery, Pasadena, TX Diana-Sofia Estrada with Marta Lidia Umaña-Matta de Wer, Estrada’s grandmother, the artists collectively present Una Patoja y una Chapina. Works that explore matriarchal family narratives and labor through fashion installation, animation, video, and sound. Conversations occur between artworks that were made past and present, with one artist having moved on to the next life. The word patoja is a colloquially word in Guatemala referring to “young girl”, a child specifically. Chapina refers to a woman from Guatemala. Using these words gives specification to background and idioms in the works presented in the gallery. Marta Umaña-Matta de Wer (1917-1985) created fashionable clothing during her time for herself, nieces, daughter, and granddaughter. Using her sewing fabrication skills, she often incorporated native textiles from various regions in Guatemala, her home country. Her craft focused on the individual body and its uniqueness to the specific person. The clothes Wer made for her granddaughter were unique to where Estrada was born- the U.S.A- reflecting Estrada’s home environment. Una Patoja y una Chapina explores creative connections between living and deceased family members. Working with the clothing Wer made, now considered family heirlooms, Estrada responds to Wer’s work directly utilizing them in performance and installations. The work in Una Patoja y una Chapina reflects on family lineage, broken narratives, and myths using video performance, animation, installation, and sound. Installation photos by Beatriz Bellorin, which are captioned. |
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2024
Prototype for an underwater Dance Dance Revolution: If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution. 2024 Video sculpture, 20x20x20 inches Plexiglass, refurbished computer tablet, mylar, vinyl, solar lights, and silicone. A video sculpture titled “Prototype for an Underwater Dance Dance Revolution: If I Can’t Dance to It, It’s Not My Revolution,” referencing a phrase by revolutionary, political activist, and writer Emma Goldman. The artwork is a collection of varying kinds of plastics collected and exhibited over the past 13 years. The woven components are from bags that held food I ate at the beginning of the COVID lockdown while I was living in Southern California. Other plastics, like the mylar, have been in three of my art installations. The box itself was made early in my career when I was exploring the concept of the human body in general. Projected on all these is a video I made during my first winter holiday when I returned to Houston, Texas, to live. The video is a scene of RGB lights pulsating and changing. Some of the light shifts can stimulate seizures. In one sense, the sculpture acts as a time-capsule. In reference to memory, there is a physical attempt at mitigation: the viewer sees reflections. Mimicking elements of a fun house, log fire in a home, and an aquarium, together create a sense of unease and discomfort.
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Photo by Thomas Dubrock
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The Magic Hat
2024 Video installation, variable dimensions, duration 30 seconds Animation, acrylic screens with rear projection foil, metal, blackout fabric, projector “The Magic Hat,” is a video installation that is influenced by archetypal symbols and legends. Initially, I wanted to create a “Pepper’s Ghost”: a 19th-century theatrical technique that creates an illusion of a ghost through a 45-degree reflection. Pepper’s Ghosts were used by magicians during this period and continue to be used today in music concerts and theatrical productions. However, in my installation, there is no hidden room or solid figure. Everything is projected as light and distorted.
In the animation, a cowboy hat turns into different objects associated with masculinity and production. Depending on where you stand in relation to the screens, you might see a solid object. But if you were to walk close to that area, you would discover there is nothing there. The title references Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which addresses Enlightenment themes. I created a visual work where viewers see reflections and mirroring. Their direct view of what is solid or directly projected is mitigated. |
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2019
R.E.V.O.L.T II, North Hollywood, CA
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Part of Print as Protest group show at Los Angeles Valley College, R.E.V.O.L.T II, was a continued investigation and expression of involving viewers in the creation of artwork. Students were introduced to the original concepts of the piece and then invited to take it apart and make it theirs by creating collages out of it. The students deconstructed the panels, finding words significant to them, creating more prints and collages. After their work was signed, the collages and prints were hung up as part of the installation.
Thanks to the Los Angeles Valley College Gallery and Director, Professor Jenene Nagy Assistance by LAVC Gallery Techniques students Lee Rubenstein, Linda Thomas (photos noted), and Marilyn Ruman |
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2018
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Signs of Contemplation
Mirroring Resilience, curated by Edgar Fabián Frías, La Maida Institute,North Hollywood, CA Responding to the La Maida Institute and the artists that participated in the Mirroring Resilience artist intensive, I created forty 2"x2 linocut blocks creating images of the objects found around the La Maida Institute that a visitor would see. A durational performance, I invited participants and visitors on the exhibition day to create their own composition which they signed and took home.
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2017
R.E.V.O.L.T, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA An installation and printmaking performance/workshop focused on engaging viewers in conversation with a simple form of printmaking. Participants were asked to help with creating R.E.V.O.L.T banners. Participants were also invited to take artwork they made home. Performance took place at Nan Rae Gallery at Woodbury University January 21, 2017 and February 22nd, 2017.
Workshop Performance photos here |
photo by Michiko Yao
Photo by Michiko Yao
Nan Rae Gallery Woodbury University
Nan Rae Gallery Woodbury University
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2015
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Mountain Through A Peephole , Box 13 Artspace, Houston, TX
00:05:40, double projected video, drapes with reflective fabric, two peepholes currently live by the Hollywood hills in Los Angeles, California, but I grew up in Houston and miss its expansive sky. Mountains were just an idea while living in Houston, but are a constant reality for me now. The similarities between Los Angeles and Houston are many such as having diverse cultures, urban sprawl, and concerns about the impact of natural forces on its city. Landscape is a major difference. Thinking about how natural disasters impact Houston and Los Angeles’s landscape, Mountain Through a Peephole contrasts the two cities’ geography and their needs for preparedness as a viewer experience.
Mountain Through a Peephole is a video installation that inverts the public spectacle of the window display and the voyeurism of a peephole. Often times, viewers encounter disaster events through media; this installation affirms that experience, but takes it for what it actually is – a voyeuristic experience. Presenting the landscape in various states of disaster, a video projection inside the window display illustrates these events as cyclical. On the windows are two peepholes creating a type of camera obscura with hindered views. Looking to the growth of natural disasters in both Houston and Los Angeles, this installation asks, “Are you ready?” Reminding everyone that the big one is still coming. |
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2010
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Chandelier Mosque, video and text installation at Dan Graham space, Los Angeles
Chandelier Mosque is a project that combines video documentation of a mosque with a spatial installation featuring reflective surfaces and the text of our first amendment.
Reflecting on the recent verbal/physical attacks on the American Muslim population, in this installation Estrada presents documentation of the interior of a mosque filmed on the day of Eid, the end of Ramadan, in 2009. This year, Eid fell on 9/11/2010. A work in contemplation for a year, following the lunar year, Estrada brings this video footage together with the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution to comment on our present moment. In the video documentation, the camera spins around the interior décor of the construction, then starts to slowly follow the figures of Muslim youth taking pictures in the mosque. By situating the video and text in an environment of reflective mylar surfaces, Estrada calls attention to the viewer’s own perception in contrast to the filmed images. She creates a distorted mirror, reflecting the viewer in the close, narrow environment of the gallery space. |
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