Isa Estrada

Isa Estrada (they/she) is a queer, mixed-Indigenous interdisciplinary artist (San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians/Luiseño tribal member, Chicane, Scandinavian, and Irish) from Minneapolis, MN. Their practice is primarily centered in oil painting while also spanning across beadwork, sculpture, performance, and installation. Continuous movement between Southern California and Minnesota throughout their life has shaped an ongoing interest in contradiction, ambiguity, and experiences that resist easy definition. Positioned between multiple cultural lineages and geographic locations, their work considers how identity and history become embodied and translated, and what happens in the process.

Isa’s paintings engage a visual language often informed by the abstract expressionist movement in direct challenge to its legacy and exclusions. Abstraction becomes a way of moving through interpersonal and political conditions without collapsing them into fixed interpretations. This approach carries across mediums, where shifts in material choice alter relationships to labor and touch. Placed within institutional and white cube spaces, the work acts as an interruption, resisting stereotypical expectations surrounding what Indigenous art is supposed to look like and where it belongs.

Isa has shown work in numerous exhibitions across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California. They graduated with an Associate’s Degree with an emphasis in American Indian Studies from Saint Paul College in 2020 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2026. Isa is currently a first year MFA candidate in the Art program at the Stamps College of Art and Design at the University of Michigan.