Residue Evidence

Aaron Douglas Estrada grew up in LA absorbing contradictions – colonial histories, Catholic ritual, Mesoamerican tradition, all of it layered in the same city block. Now he makes work that holds that complexity without resolving it. Lint from Dickies pockets. Plastic bags pressed into something singular. Objects that outlive their purpose and carry everything we'd rather put in a drawer.

Your work pulls at deep threads – colonialism, Catholicism, Mesoamerican ritual, Santería. How did growing up in LA teach you to hold all of that at once?

LA is a culturally dense place where different traditions and histories are constantly coming into contact with one another. Growing up here, those things never felt completely separate. Cultures overlap, people borrow from one another, and traditions shift as they move between generations and communities. I value that complexity rather than trying to resolve it. LA taught me that contradictory histories can exist in the same place, and sometimes even within the same person.

“A Dickies pocket isn't just fabric. It can speak about class, aspiration, and style.”

The materials are so specific – lint from Dickies pockets, spit, blood, smoke, a family iron from El Salvador. How does an object earn its place in the work?

The materials I incorporate into the work all carry a story, although some stories are more accessible than others. I’m curious about what an object has already lived through before it enters the work. An everyday object can contain histories that aren't immediately visible. The object can be a tool, but it can also carry the associations we place on it. A Dickies pocket isn't just fabric. It can speak about class, aspiration, and style. A family iron isn't simply a tool; it carries the history of its use and the people who used it. I don't want to erase those histories; instead, I’d rather have space for those memories and collective associations to accumulate.

You make one-off bags using a heat press – taking one of the most disposable objects on the planet and making it singular. Was that tension intentional?

The lifespan of the plastic bag is unusual. We call them "single-use," and now some are labeled "reusable," but the material itself will probably outlive the person who purchased it. There is something absurd about that contradiction. An item designed to be forgotten can physically remain for generations. That tension between what we value and what survives is important to me. The things we decide are valuable aren't necessarily the things that last. We live in a moment where many objects are produced cheaply and consumed quickly, while the material waste remains long after the original object has disappeared.

With the bags, I'm taking something designed to be disposable and spending time with it by collecting it, pressing it, layering it, and turning it into something singular. The context changes its value, but it doesn't erase what it was.

“The things we decide are valuable aren't necessarily the things that last.”

You created drawers filled with plastic bags – a private domestic space for things you're not ready to deal with. What were you sitting with when that came together?

I was thinking about baggage, both the physical things we accumulate and the things we carry internally. A drawer functions as storage in a domestic space, but it's also where we put things we don't necessarily want to look at. You close it, and the thing is still there. That space between hiding something and actually processing it. There are things we carry because we're not ready to deal with them, and there are things we carry because they've become part of who we are. The work asks what happens when those things accumulate.

Is making work about erasure an act of resistance, or something more complicated?

I think it's more complicated. Erasing something doesn't necessarily make it disappear. Sometimes the attempt to remove something makes its absence even more visible. History works that way. Things get covered, rewritten, renamed, displaced, or forgotten, but traces remain. For me, resistance isn't always about recovering something perfect or returning it to some original state. It's about acknowledging what is missing and asking why it disappeared in the first place.

“Something disposable becomes protected. Something almost invisible is given the kind of physical security usually reserved for something we have already decided is valuable.”

You co-founded 3B making public works, and then here you are putting lint behind bulletproof acrylic. How do those two scales talk to each other?

Residue is what connects those scales. The importance of what we believe deserves our attention. Does something have to be monumental or recognizable before we consider it significant? The lint comes from Dickies pockets. It's something you normally remove and throw away, but it also becomes evidence of labor. It comes from clothes that have been worn, worked in, washed, and worn again. There's also something familiar in the idea of reaching into your pockets after working and realizing all you have is lint. Putting that material behind bulletproof acrylic changes the terms of how it's viewed. Something disposable becomes protected. Something almost invisible is given the kind of physical security usually reserved for something we have already decided is valuable.

The public work and smaller studio work come from a similar process. Both involve research, fieldwork, conversations, and looking closely at what already exists in a place.

Five hidden gems in LA?

Almaya
La Flor De Yucatan
Correas Mariscos & Cocina
LA Public Library Octavia Lab
CSUDH Art Department

aarondestrada.com
@aarondestrada