IN PRAISE OF THE SHADOW
Commissioned for the exhibition Formas das Águas (MAM-Rio, 2025), curated by Raquel Barreto and Pablo Lafuente, In Praise of the Shadow begins with cartographic projections of the Moon and tilts them to the irregular rhythm of the tides of Guanabara Bay, the exhibition’s central theme, allowing the reflection of the celestial body to undo ambitions of dominion.
The cartography employed derives from recent satellite captures while simultaneously carrying centuries of accumulated images of this same celestial body. The projection adopted by Estrada is already oriented toward mineral extraction: at its center are the lunar maria - basaltic plains named in the seventeenth century for their dark and enigmatic appearance to the terrestrial observer.
Revisiting selenography, the science that describes and names the Moon, Estrada focuses on Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Cognitum, and Oceanus Procellarum: territories marked by extractivist desire and, for centuries, surfaces of projection. Before any empirical knowledge, the dark stain was taken for a sea. When science renames it, these projections do not cease, they merely change status, and what was once shadow and unknown becomes a zone of intense mineral interest. Beneath the veneer of scientific observation, the celestial lexicon operates as a gesture of possession, ratifying national presences, legitimizing institutions, and inscribing power onto the firmament. Language not only describes but turns the Moon into territory, a suspended continent where human expansion rehearses its own scale.
By bringing this celestial nomenclature closer to the colonial toponymy of the Americas, Estrada reveals how the act of naming, a star, a bay, a piece of world, participates in the same grammar of possession. In In Praise of the Shadow, the lunar surface ceases to be distant data and returns as an oblique mirror of the Earth: both appear covered in names, caught in a continuous state of interpretation and dispute. The title suggests yet another inclination: to reserve praise for that which, like shadow, does not settle. That which exists and endures despite a name. That which hesitates to assume contours. Perhaps it is there that the Moon truly presents itself as shadow, dark matter that exists before, and despite, its continuous contestation, reading, and invention.
