Andres Payan Estrada

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

My work engages craft-based processes—clay, textiles, glass, and collage— to explore social surfaces and cultural histories of queer spaces and nightlife. Through research, documentation, and making, I explore the transient yet powerful role of nightlife spaces as sites of joy and resilience. The various bodies of work that I have focused on for the past five years engage with the physicality and ephemerality of queer nightlife spaces by documenting aspects of the queer experience which are often seen as mundane or ordinary but pivotal to the creation of these seminal spaces. Much of the research process of the work engages with both archeologic and anthropologic forms, such as interviews, site visits, and documentation. The materialized sculptural objects or installations often engage with the historical function, role, or value of the materials or spaces. Such as the creation of jacquard weavings created by a computerized loom, the weavings are based on images of floors from queer nightlife spaces. Referencing tapestries function as historical records or decorative objects, subverted by the pictorial depiction of debris and residual trace of queer experiences. For over a decade, I’ve photographed and archived fragments of queer nightlife, informing installations like Nocturnal Visions along with and the sound of the voice flowed through your body, where textile and glass sculpture, ceramics, and collage transform found spaces with queer histories. Using printed...

Artwork