Three quarter view of the artist, Estrella Esquilin. She is looking to her left, with dark curly hair worn down and over the shoulders, wearing a white, low cut tank top and brass hoop earrings in front of a constructed rock wall. — Photo by Crystal Hernandez, 2023.

An aerial view of an assortment of prints, drawings, cut pieces of wood, and markers with cutting mats on the desk of the artist. — Assortment of items on studio work table, photo by David Blakeman 2023.

Read more about Estrella in the September 2023 Southwest Contemporary Magazine studio visit feature by Lynn Trimble.

Estrella Esquilín is an interdisciplinary visual artist and arts worker in Phoenix, Arizona.

Between and among cultures, ethnicities and places that influence how she moves and thrives in the world, Estrella is a space-curious visual artist with old roots in the Caribbean and new roots in the Sonoran Desert. Moving to the desert felt so far from the sea and salt and influence of the tropics, until she started hiking the southwest landscape. The variegated layers of stone that make the southwest landscape so colorful is due to ancient tropical seas rising and falling over a million years. Connecting with the landscape helped her understand that she is also connected to her ancestors and the African diaspora that makes up her Caribbean heritage - layer by layer.

Esquilín’s applied creative practices have been intuitively rooted in spatial justice with a curiosity for how people interact with, relate to, and impact each other in built and natural environments.

She is trained as a printmaker and often uses traditional 2D fine art printmaking techniques, however she also explores the use of construction materials, building spaces for people to move through or around, somatic movement, abstracted and appropriated maps, collage, audio, and animation.

Esquilín uses her body as a measuring tool when building installations and considers how layers of materials can influence layers of meaning as they relate to her perspectives on the build and natural environments where she experiences life.

Her expression is the result of process-based exploration and is shown publicly as a prompt for critical conversation among people willing to be curious about diasporic experiences.

Esquilín has exhibited and produced collaborative projects in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Mexico. She has been the recipient of artist residencies in Gatlinburg, TN (Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 2020) Guadalajara, Jalisco (PAOS GDL 2017), New York (iLAND 2015, New York Arts Practicum 2015, AICAD New York Studio Residency Program 2013), Puerto Rico (Beta Local 2014), and New Mexico (Herekeke Art Center 2015).

She earned a Master of Fine Art degree from Arizona State University in 2015 and a Bachelor of Fine Art from Kansas City Art Institute in 2007.