ARTIST BIO

Estefania Velez Rodriguez is an American artist born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico (1985). She received her MFA in painting from Brooklyn College in 2017. As a dual-tongued individual, she utilizes the symbolic language of painting as a bridge between many cultures and spaces. Her work often uses abstracted landscapes as well as non-objective visual spaces that are somewhat open field and bright. Her landscapes meander and distort physical spaces like mazes which are meant to be misleading. Utilizing chemical reactions within painting, Estefania experiments with raw pigments, spray materials, oil mediums, and acrylic polymers. Her painting language ruptures visual spaces to open the viewers' receptivity to fleeting spaces, times, and emotional presence.

Some notable exhibitions include those held at Praxis Gallery (NYC), Underdonk (NYC), Soil Gallery (Seattle), University of Arkansas (AK), Auxiliary Projects (NYC), Cunsthaus (Tampa), Vermont Studio Center (VT), and Artfair Miami (FL). Her work has been published with The Brooklyn Rail (NY), Artnet (NY), and Revista Marvin in Mexico City (CDMX). She has a public mural project with the Arts and Cultural Grant of New York and Norte Maar organization, and is a recipient of a NYFA artist grant (2020). Estefania is represented by Praxis Gallery in New York City. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.