Cacophony

Aware of the collective and fragmented nature of historical enunciation, Estrada deposits symbols of this polyphonic murmur as poetic material in Cacophony, an installation of charcoal drawings on eight linen banners hoisted in space. On the pennants - where emblems of conquest once fluttered - monstrous creatures emerge in the Mar del Sur, like those that populated European exploratory cartographies in the coveted spaces of the supposed New World, tracing uncharted territories and signalling control over maritime routes. By arranging them in this way, Estrada brings together two signs of colonial power: the banner, which asserted territorial dominion, and the creatures, which projected imaginary dominion. The latter, often taken as teratological emblems, theriomorphic symbols, and travelers’ legends, populated the “voids” of these desired and unknown geographies, extending the limits of the possible through fabulations that projected the European imagination.

The oral circulation of these narratives, transmitted from account to account, by word of mouth, was decisive in the creation of the so-called “Myths of Conquest” -  fabulous narratives that naturalize colonial violence and shape the European perception of “other” territories and bodies. Cacophony takes up this logic of distorted transmission but operates in the opposite direction: whereas language once served the invention of monstrosities as a form of domination and a justification for expansion, here its deviations and noises rise as a territory of critical fabulation. Within these narratives and symbols, the same structure of conquest persists: the one that invents the other, transforms the colonial imaginary into dominion, and dominion into history.