Folded Memories

Estefania Ajcip (b. East Los Angeles; raised in Guatemala) is an artist whose practice explores narrative, identity, and the emotional aftermath of immigration through personal memory and family history. She studied at Pasadena City College before earning a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from California State University, Long Beach. Ajcip's distinctive process begins with small cardboard architectural models, scaled up into surfaces built from carved foam and birch plywood with papier-mâché for organic forms. Her work combines painting with sculptural elements that emerge from the canvas surface, often incorporating LED lights to heighten dreamlike perspective. Drawing from half-remembered, half-imagined childhood landscapes, she inserts her adult self into these memories as a corrective gesture, examining the physical and emotional weight of her father's absence while they lived separated by borders, and celebrating their eventual reunification.