Carolina Estrada

Carolina Estrada is an artist and researcher who studies matter as culture. An example of such research is how a sensory interface connects people to technology and myths. She reflects on the relationship between technology, culture, and nature to challenge and expand our understanding of ecological systems. Her work crosses a wide range of disciplines, drawing on the humanities, sensory studies, and indigenous knowledge.

She worked for two years with traditional artists who are also politically engaged indigenous community leaders, convinced that indigenous knowledge can help us face persistent global and social problems.  She experimented using backstrap weaving (a Peruvian textile technique) and handlooms. Currently, she is expanding her research, seeking the tactile effect as a powerful sensory medium to scale it up using different techniques.

She studied visual art and social communication.

In 2021, she participated in the exhibition "Pallay Pampa: Andean Crossroads "at IFA gallery Berlin (Internationale Funkausstellung), Gallery Berlin, Germany. In 2019, she participated as a speaker at "Making Futures VI: People, Place, Meaning: Crafting Social Worlds & Social Making” organized by the British Council Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth, Devon, UK. In the same year, she exposed at the 3rd Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, "Boundless Encounters", Hangzhou, China.

• BFA, Painting. National School of Fine Arts, Lima, Peru
• Bachelor in Social Communication, specialised in Audiovisual, National University of San Marcos, Humanities Faculty, Peru

Awards

• British Council Grant to participate at "Making Futures VI: People, Place, Meaning: Crafting Social Worlds & Social Making", Plymouth College of Art, Devon, UK.
• Award of Distinction. Passport for an artist XXI, Embassy of France in Peru.

I am an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who explores textiles as a web of embodied connections between land, bodies and climate change. Proposing new narratives to understand the different layers of knowledge that feed both contemporary and ancestral practices. I examine the aesthetics of indigenous cultures, power relations and interactions between ecologies and technologies, and the environmental impacts of extractive operations.

My practice explores textiles in relation to sound, biomaterials, and electronic devices, all of which are essential elements in the production of speculative projects. These speculative projects explore the relationship between technology, culture, and nature to challenge and expand our understanding of ecological systems. In this sense, I see textiles as an interface that connects people to intercultural perspectives where matter is conceived in relation to technology and myth.

My process is based on a holistic perspective that embodies indigenous knowledge to stimulate haptic imagination. Haptic imagination encompasses touching as media. Touch can create immediate and intimate relations with materials, bodies, landscapes, and other cultural thinking. Touching as a means of interaction augments emotions and memory. I am currently looking at pre-Columbian notations, namely tattoos, as a medium to open intercultural perspectives around technology. By creating mechanisms and tools, I am trying to bring contemporary relevance to ideas of healing, activism, and environmental issues.

By combining technological tools and processes –such as robotics, open-source hardware, digital embroidery– with traditional practices –such as handloom, waist loom (traditional Peruvian technique), hand embroidery, natural materials lab, and engraving– my aim is to create patterns that link past and present, but also point to our dependence on the earth and our human limitations.