NinaJohnson

Estefania Puerta’s (b. 1988, Manizales, Colombia) work incorporates organic and inorganic materials to form a 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 psychoanalysis as it relates to the history of hysteria, natural medicine and folklore, and personal histories of immigration and undocumentation in the United States has led to questions around what is considered “natural” and “alien” in her materially diverse work.

Puerta was awarded the 2024 Philip Guston Rome Prize. Her work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Lyles and King, Micki Meng Gallery, Hesse Flatow, and Someday Gallery. In 2022 her work was included in the New England Triennial at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Puerta received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2018. She lives and works in Vermont and New York.