Orlando Estrada

Lives and works in Miami, FL

Artist statement

I combine organic and synthetic materials to build dreamlike landscapes that examine the 21st-century diasporic experience through Surrealist and Gothic lenses. Transformation is central to my practice as a material process, a spiritual principle, and a way of understanding the world. I explore how objects, landscapes, and bodies hold memory, carry intention, and become sites of encounter with unseen forces. Using discarded cardboard, polyurethane foam, 3D-printed elements, clay, reclaimed objects, and organic matter, I create allegorical environments where the natural and fabricated converge, creating a sense of interdimensionality. I shape foam over wood and wire armatures, flock surfaces with coconut fiber, and embed found and fabricated objects. Elements mounted on metal pins are driven into the sculptures, invoking African nail-adorned power figures and Caribbean folk-magic practices. These gestures transform sculpture from representation into something that holds intention, belief, and presence. By bringing digitally created objects into contact with transformed physical materials, my work reflects how diasporic people navigate between cultures, places, and systems of belief. Moving between worlds becomes a source of invention and power. Through sculpture, I construct landscapes where technology becomes ritual, materials carry psychological and spiritual meaning, and inherited histories become vessels for speculation and wonder. — Orlando Estrada

Artwork