Los Angeles-based artist Estefania Ajcip turns personal history into vivid relief in Folded Memories, a new body of sculptural paintings probing what happens to a family when it’s split between places. Having spent much of her childhood in Guatemala while her father worked in L.A., Ajcip channels that absence into layered tableaux built from birch plywood, papier mache, small LED lights, and acrylic. She often begins with family photographs, lifting scenes and household objects into a fantastical register where grief, desire, and dream logic share the same frame.
Scenes of separation, built in relief
Fissures and breaks literally structure the works, revealing and concealing details as the viewer shifts position. In “Telephone game” (2026), the artist appears with a paper phone and string to her ear, while her father stands at a public payphone that protrudes from the two-dimensional surface—an everyday device stretched into a bridge across distance. The piece is rendered in birch plywood sheet, foam board, thread, matte gel, and acrylic on panel (36 x 24 x 8 inches).
Elsewhere, “Momo 2012” (2026) captures two adults grasping hands, but an opening in the wood discloses a forlorn girl with her paper train set, a private scene nested inside a public embrace. The work combines birch plywood sheet, plywood, lights, and acrylic on panel (24 x 12 x 2 inches). Perspective shifts intensify in “Four paths/Two paths?” (2026), where a sculptural bus shuttles between L.A. and Guatemala. At the vehicle’s front window, the latter’s national bird flutters forward as a sign of togetherness and hope. Fabricated from birch plywood sheet, foam board, acrylic sheets, paper mache, lights, and acrylic on panel (25 x 38.5 x 13 inches), the work, a statement notes, most directly confronts “the familial unity that Ajcip so longed for throughout her childhood. Across the exhibition, Ajcip makes clear again and again how the longing that defined her youth now fuels her art, a powerful reminder that strength often grows in adversity.”
Additional pieces extend this language of rupture and repair: “Do I pray for what is lost?” (2026), in birch plywood sheet, foam board, light, and acrylic on panel (18 x 22.5 x 4.5 inches); “To the last use” (2026), in birch plywood, foam, paper mache, and acrylic on birch plywood (36 x 27 x 7.5 inches); “Back to One” (2026), in birch plywood sheet, foam board, matte gel, and acrylic on panel (30 x 43 x 10 inches); “keys to success” (2026), and “On a corner (finger)” (2026), each layering modest materials into quietly theatrical relief.
Folded Memories is on view through August 22 at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, where Ajcip’s carefully lit, hand-built worlds trace the contours of distance—and the stubborn hope that travels across it.
