Portas Vilaseca takes part in the “Transe” section at Sp-Arte Rotas 2025 with a solo presentation of artist Emília Estrada, curated by Lucas Albuquerque.

The section connects artists from Latin America and Europe, focusing on the non-figurative: an ambiguous territory, where figuration dissolves and the pure abstraction is defied. Inside those intrinsically mutable practices, body, gesture, memory, and movement intertwine in an undisciplined way. The section gather new works by five artists with different backgrounds.

For “Transe”, Estrada presents observational drawings of the lunar surface, made with charcoal on linen, silk, and velvet. The textures of these fabrics echo sensorial and symbolic landscapes that unfold into visual maps where figure and abstraction merge. The gold leaf frames, inspired by ancient cartographies, function not as ornament but as a narrative structure that guides the reading of the image. Her works establish a contemplative and poetic rhythm, in which the Moon — a territory already colonized by scientific and imaginary narratives — is revisited through a migrant, poetic, and political lens.

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Emilia Estrada (b. Córdoba, 1989) is an artist and researcher, based in Rio de Janeiro.

Her practice is interested in excavating the layers of urban and social fabric which underpin processes of nation state formation in the territory now known as Latin America. Estrada invetigate confined images or collections, tensioning ideas of occupation and displacement. By examining the symbolic repertoires which inform imaginaries of place, her work looks at the production of history and narrative. As a multimedia artist using a variety of techniques, her work plays with the elastic capacity of language. She inspect the possibilities arising from fractures in communication, where word becomes matter and thus a shard, a path or a journey.

Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio, Museu de Arte do Rio, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, and SESC Pompéia, among others. She studied Visual Arts at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) and Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) and was a fellow of the Contemporary Artistic Practices program at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro.