Reclaiming Identity and Purpose: The Art of Esther Padilla
“I am a solitary wolf in her steppe, a space filled with compost that I transform into my works. I create to look my demons in the eye and understand them,” Esther Padilla.
Esther Padilla’s journey into the world of art is one marked by hardship, survival, and an intense need to express her deeply personal experiences. Born in San Antonio, Texas, to a Cuban refugee father and an Oaxacan mother, her early life was shaped by the complexities of migration, separation, and poverty.
“My mom is from Oaxaca, and my father was a Cuban refugee in the United States. I was born there, in San Antonio, Texas,” she recalls. “When I was four, my parents separated, and my mother brought me to Mexico City. We were homeless for a time, living on the streets, begging for food. After a few years, we moved to Oaxaca, rented a room, but we were always moving around.”
The experiences of living in such unstable and difficult conditions at a young age had a profound impact on her and became the foundation for much of her later artistic exploration. “That early life marked me and gave layers of meaning to my artwork,” she says. “Everything I went through, all the struggles, brought me here—to this moment, where I create each painting and sculpture. It gave me purpose.”
Art, for Esther, became the means to understand and make sense of her life. “Art is the way I found to understand everything. The most important thing was discovering my purpose. Everything I went through got me here. For this, I exist.”
Reflecting on her family’s influence on her artistic journey, Esther recalls, “My family consisted only of my mother and me,” she explains. “My grandfather was a sculptor, but I didn’t know him. I didn’t even learn about him until my mother told me when I entered art school. She took me to a couple of churches in Oaxaca to see his sculptures.”
While her family provided an initial connection to art, Esther’s relationship with the craft developed independently, shaped by her own experiences. “When I began my artistic journey, I wasn’t living with my mom, so I didn’t consider her opinion at the time,” she adds. “I spent a year at the Casa de la Cultura, and that’s when I decided to enter the Academy of Fine Arts.”
Esther’s path to discovering art was far from traditional. “After finishing high school, I explored various forms of art—music, literature, theater, dance. But it wasn’t until I was 20 and took a drawing course where I drew from a live model that I realized I felt peace while drawing,” she reflects.
“I consider that the most significant moment—the moment I truly learned how to draw. It happened before I even entered Fine Arts. When I got to the Fine Arts school, I didn’t find resonance there. My classmates and teachers were absorbed in mimesis, something I had already achieved on my own.”
Though she formally studied fine arts for seven years—spending one year at the Casa de la Cultura, five at the School of Fine Arts, and another year at the Rufino Tamayo workshop—Esther considers herself largely self-taught. “When creating a piece, its uniqueness prevents me from establishing a permanent working method,” she explains.
In fact, Esther’s early explorations in art led her to experiment with techniques that her formal education did not emphasize. “I made sculpture for the first time, using techniques that wouldn’t have taken more than a year to learn, but the educational system takes so much longer,” she notes.
“I created things that didn’t resonate within the school, like installations, and embroidery on sculptures made of fabric. This was before the Textile Museum in Oaxaca was even created.” These early works were part of her journey toward greater artistic freedom, a journey that was also supported by a FOESCA scholarship. “The scholarship gave me the financial support to dedicate myself exclusively to experimentation for a year,” she says.
Ceramics, too, played a crucial role in her development as an artist. “I also consider it very important to have learned ceramics at the Rufino Tamayo workshop,” she adds. The technical challenges of ceramics taught her valuable lessons about precision and patience.
“Before making any artistic proposal in ceramics, you must ensure that your pieces do what you want them to do—that they hold together and don’t explode in the kiln. Knowing how to draw and mastering the techniques of painting and ceramics give me the freedom to make my intellectual and artistic proposals. Technique is a means, not an end.”
Through her diverse experiences, Esther has come to see technique as a tool for unlocking deeper artistic expression. While her work delves into personal, autobiographical themes, she believes these themes also have a universal resonance.
“Most of my themes are autobiographical. For a painting called Al Márgen, which addresses social exclusion, I studied a theory by anthropologist René Girard on the social mechanism of the ‘scapegoat,’” she explains. “I also explored the concept of stupidity and found some intellectuals who analyzed this, which led to a sculpture.”
Drawing from the challenges she has faced, Esther channels her personal journey into her art, finding connections between her experiences and those of others. “Maybe my life experience is atypical, since few people have lived on the streets, and even fewer will dedicate themselves to the arts. But I believe this connects me to experiences like migration, poverty, and marginalization. They are personal, but because of that, they are universal.”
Her choice of materials is often varied, as she believes each piece calls for its own specific medium. “I use almost unique techniques for each work. I especially enjoy sculpto-painting because it allows me to combine two elements I truly love in a single piece,” she says.
Regarding the relationship between her art and the artistic scene in Mexico, Esther reflects: “I see the work being done at the local, national, and international levels, in painting and sculpture and in other arts as well. However, in a more intimate way, I don’t relate it to my work. I think it’s because, having lived on the streets, I became disillusioned with society.”
“I lost faith in institutions like Christian charity, family, school, and society itself,” she reflects. “My mother had a family, but we lived on the streets.” This experience, marked by a sense of alienation, eventually led her to explore ideas that spoke to her own struggles and discontent.
“Later, I found resonance with my concerns in the anarchist philosophy of Ivan Illich,” she continues, citing his influential works Deschooling Society, Medical Nemesis, and In Praise of the Bicycle. While Illich’s critiques of society resonated with her, Esther quickly clarifies that her path.
“But politics wasn’t my thing. Art was.” In this way, she emphasizes that while her experiences and intellectual interests may have led her to question societal structures, it was through art that she ultimately sought expression and meaning.
As Esther reflects on her artistic journey and personal experiences, she says, “Although I am accompanied by the great minds of distinguished men and women through the novels I read, the theories, and discoveries I study, I believe I have earned my solitary steppe through the suffering, both personal and that of my mother. I describe myself as a solitary wolf in her steppe, filled with compost that transforms into the works I create to look my demons in the eye and understand them. I do it first for myself and for those who can see it.”
Esther’s influences are diverse, ranging from literature, film, and psychology to artists like Rufino Tamayo, Remedios Varo, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, and Marcel Duchamp. “In the visual arts, pre-Hispanic art and Rufino Tamayo really move me,” she explains. “But there are many intellectuals, artists, and writers who inspire me through their theories, their discoveries, and the novels I read.”
Esther Padilla’s art. Diptych “Autorretratos de una casa,” Papier-mâché. Oil on canvas, ceramics mounted on a wooden and metal scaffold. 2023. Video and art courtesy of Esther Padilla.
Through her work, Esther seeks to communicate raw, unfiltered truth. “I believe no one can walk away indifferent after seeing one of my works in person. It may cause repulsion or admiration, but I don’t try to create only ‘pretty’ or pleasing things. I don’t aim to annoy either. I simply express the truth as I perceive it, with the greatest authenticity I can.”
To aspiring artists, Esther offers this advice: “They should see what is being proposed in other places. They shouldn’t stay confined to the local, nor to cultural politics, but neither should they be limited to proposals. They should try to look outward while also looking inward. I believe this is what Rufino Tamayo did in his time, which is why I find it admirable. And also, they should draw inspiration from other interests, whether in other arts, sciences, etc. Everything can be interesting.”
Finally, Esther reflects on the life lessons that art has taught her: “Art can give you a life, regardless of whether you’re the most charming, the most sociable, or whether you have many financial resources. You can’t renounce being an artist, but it’s not something you can choose either; you can only discover if it’s who you truly are.”
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Soledad Quartucci, CEO, Latina Republic
Latina Republic envisions a world where the beauty and resilience of Latin American and Caribbean cultures are recognized and appreciated globally. By amplifying the voices of artists and cultural custodians, we strive to cultivate a deeper understanding of the region’s challenges and triumphs. Our goal is to inspire greater appreciation for the arts as a tool for empathy, unity, and transformative social change. Through our work, we aim to equip all stakeholders with essential insights for addressing regional challenges, ultimately enriching the global cultural landscape and portraying the victories and hardships of everyday life in Latin America.