EMILIA ESTRADA
Emilia Estrada (b. Córdoba, Argentina, 1989) is an artist and researcher who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Engaging with notions of displacement and occupation, her practice confronts the ways in which power is inscribed in archives and in representations of space. By probing the gaps and omissions of official records, Estrada excavates buried memories and proposes alternative readings of hegemonic historical narratives. For the artist, archives are not merely neutral repositories of information that contribute to the production of history, but contested fields where remembrance and erasure intertwine, revealing structures of domination.
Working primarily with drawing, installation, and archival research, Estrada investigates terrestrial and celestial cartographies as instruments of power that organize and naturalize arbitrary borders, legitimizing processes of exploitation and territorial appropriation.
By articulating poetic, iconographic, and archival elements, the artist constructs speculative mappings that make visible the arbitrariness of historiography and the symbolic systems that shape territorial imaginaries.
In her works, cartography is not reinvented but unmasked: what presents itself as a descriptive tool reveals itself to be a fiction shaped by vested interests - and it is within this contaminated terrain, where documentation and imagination have always intermingled, that her practice operates. Here, Estrada brings together historical documents, iconographic archives, and mythologies, weaving them into drawings and installations that destabilize inherited narratives and fabulate new territorial imaginaries. In recent investigations, the artist turns her gaze to the sky and takes the Moon as a surface of projection, where science, mythology, and colonial desire converge. Celestial cartography - its reliefs, compositions, and nomenclatures - is analyzed as a mirror of terrestrial imperial projects, revealing how science, mythology, and fiction intertwine in aspirations of possession and control. Her visual vocabulary interlaces references from colonial heraldry and science fiction imaginaries, expanding the possibilities of cartographic imagination.
EXHIBITIONS
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AND RESIDENCES
2025 PERMANENTLY SHADOWED
Solo at Cantadora Gallery
Curated by Flávia Prestininzi | Roma
2025 FORMA DAS ÁGUAS
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio
Curated by Pablo Lafuente and Raquel Barreto | Rio de Janeiro
2025 EVERY MORNING, A TIME
HATCH Gallery
Curated by Amina Diab | Paris
2025 TEMPO COMPOSTO
Athena Gallery
Curated by Lucas Alberto | Rio de Janeiro
2024 OTRA ORILLA [Another Shore]
Gateway Exhibition at Manarat Saadiyat
Curated by Odessa Warren and Carine Harmand | Abu Dhabi
2024 ABRE ALAS 19
Gentil Carioca Gallery
Curated by Agrade Camíz and Daniela Castro | Rio de Janeiro
2023 MUAMBA: Brazilian Traces of Movement
Ruby Cruel Gallery
Curated by Lucas Albuquerque | London
2022 MANJAR NASCENTE
Solar dos Abacaxis - Curated by: Bernardo Mosqueira, Catarina Duncan and Ana Clara Simões Lopes | Rio de Janeiro
2022 A PARÁBOLA DO PROGRESSO [Parable of Progress]
SESC Pompéia
Curated by Lisette Lagnado, André Pitol and Yudi Rafael | São Paulo
2022 OUTRAS IMAGINAÇÕES POLITICAS [Other Political Imaginations]
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio - MAM
Curated by Luisa Duarte and Pollyana Quintella | Rio de Janeiro
2022 ZIL, ZIL, ZIL
Centro Cultural Hélio Oiticica
Curated by Bruna Costa, Felipe Carnaúba and Antonio Tebyriçá | Rio de Janeiro
2022 HEAT
Quadra Gallery
Curated by Victor Gorgulho | Rio de Janeiro
2021 MIRA
ArtRio 2021
Curated by Victor Gorgulho | Rio de Janeiro
2020 CASA CARIOCA [Carioca Home]
Museu de Arte do Rio - MAR
Curated by Joice Berth and Marcelo Campos | Rio de Janeiro
2019 NAZANZA
Aymoré Gallery
Curated by Aldones Nino, Anna Priscila Marques, Bárbara Machado, Carole Chueke, Juliana Knopp, Juliana Pajek, Lorena Brito, Lucas Albuquerque, Osvaldo Carvalho, Pietro di Biase, Silvana Marcelina and Thais Rocha | Rio de Janeiro
2018 ARTE APROXIMA [Art Approaches]
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes MNBA Curated by Lisette Lagnado | Rio de Janeiro
2018 POUSO DE EMERGÊNCIA [ Emergency landing]
Caixa Preta
Curated by Rafa Bqueer and Vinícius Monte | Rio de Janeiro
2018 JUNHO DE 2013, 5 ANOS DEPOIS [June 2013, 5 years later]
Centro Cultural Hélio Oiticica
Curated by Daniela Machado and Gabriela Lúcio | Rio de Janeiro
2016 DEPOIS DO FUTURO [After the Future]
EAV Parque Lage
Curated by Daniela Labra | Rio de Janeiro
2025 GASWORKS RESIDENCY
London
2020 RESIDENCY IN INSTITUTO ADELINA
São Paulo
2019 ARTISTIC RESIDENCY IN MUSEU DA IMIGRAÇÃO
São Paulo
2019 ABERTA Residency in Centro Culural Hélio Oiticica
Rio de Janeiro
2017 Research grant for International Residencies for Research and Production
Bilbao, Euskadi (Basque Country)
2015 Fellow of the Contemporary Art Practices Program at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage
Rio de Janeiro