Estefania Puerta‘s work delves into organic/inorganic materials to form new poetics of transformation and translation. She is interested in what is gained and lost in the process of making and the new worlds that can emerge from recontextualizing materials. Her practice is rooted in world making, shape shifting, border crossing, and language failure. Her research in psycho-analysis as it relates to the history of hysteria, natural medicine/folklore, and personal histories of immigration and undocumentation in the U.S. has led to questions around what is considered “natural” and “alien” in her materially diverse work.
Puerta was recently awarded the 2024 Philip Guston Rome Prize. Her work has been recently exhibited at The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Nina Johnson Gallery, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, Lyles and King, and Micki Meng Gallery. She was included in the New England Triennial at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in 2022. Puerta received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2018. She was born in Colombia and currently lives and works between Vermont and New York.
