This week we welcome Tiago Estrada, a visual artist originally from Portugal, now based in Jackson Heights, Queens. He makes work in a wide variety of media, much of which references research regarding language and its use, and how it impacts one’s true freedom and expression.
For Estrada, the main problem behind language, regardless of the idiom, lies behind the fact that a language is no more than a constructed system of communication, and its understanding derives from one’s apprehension of that pre-existent set of rules or archetypal system.
Tiago studied at the School of Fine Arts of Oporto, Portugal, and went on to earn a master’s in fine arts degree in painting at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His work is in the MoMA Archives, the Drawing Center’s Digital Archive Online, Culturgest in Lisbon, Portugal, and Colecção ECO in Marvão, Portugal.
A series of abstract mixed media works on paper extend his research into language, offering a non-representational mode open for interpretation.
The booklet project “The Future of Leisure”, is a take on the infamous output of Jack Chick publications. “The narrative explores the notion of post-automation (AI) and its social implications in the labor/leisure market. Our current inability to confront free time is what drives this project. Understanding leisure time is the real quest for humanity, to be able to think and to detach ourselves from the time matrix – unplug for what? What to do with all the free time? Free time from what?”
See more of Estrada’s work on his website.
