SEED Artists-In-Residence Fall 23/Spring 24
Estrella Esquilín
Estrella Esquilín is a multi-disciplinary artist, creative project manager, and cultural strategist in Phoenix, Arizona.
Esquilín is fast-moving by nature, but enjoys deeply observing the world at a slow and intentional pace. She especially loves observing how people interact with each other and experience built and natural environments. Formally trained as a printmaker, her artwork also explores the use of building materials, constructed spaces, movement, collage, animation, and audio experiences. She loves intentional and powerful design and construction. Her interest in questioning power and privilege, having a critical eye toward inequitable systems combined with her lived experience as a Puerto Rican in the United States, drives her motivation to creatively complicate physical spaces. Reorienting viewers’ experience and perspective through formal and aestheticized construction is often a goal of her studio practice. Through installation and abstract gestures, she often asks, “how might it feel to navigate a space that was built for you?” This guiding question also folds into her work outside of the studio. She embeds her values of curiosity, authenticity, and service into her studio practice, project management and creative professional development to narrow gaps of inequity within arts and culture.
Esquilín holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from Arizona State University and a BFA in Printmaking from Kansas City Art Institute.
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

Photo by Crystal Hernandez
What do you believe your role is
as an artist?
"I feel like my role as an artist is to be my authentic self. I also value being civically engaged with what’s going on in my community, creatively participating in ways that I am able, while reflecting ways to be curious and critical about the world around me."
What is at the core of your work?
"Curiosity and ideas around how people interact with, relate to, and impact each other in built and natural environments are at the core of my work."





