Esteban Garcia Bravo

🔥 Welcome to the SJSU Foundry 🔥 @sjsufoundry Big things are coming 👀 Our newest sculpture project @sjculture is on the way, and our teams are hard at work bringing it to life , stay tuned for the reveal. The Foundry is where ideas take shape and creativity comes to life. Want to be part of it? Come take a class and get hands on with the process. @cadre_sjsu #SJSU #SJSUFoundry #ArtInTheMaking #sj26

📍 From Public Art Dialogue 16.1: Children, play, and spatial agency 🧩 Featuring: ✦ Ellie Barrett @elliecbarrett “‘Aftermath’ and ‘Bundle’: Critical Forms for Co-Produced Sculpture” ✦ Annelies Vaneycken @annelies_vaneycken “Rasquinet Play Park: Reimagining the Junk Playground in Contemporary Brussels” ✦ Yifan Fan @f.yifan and Esteban Garcia Bravo @snebtor “Public Art Activation Opportunities for the City of West Lafayette” 🤸‍♂️One of the important threads in this open issue is the role of children’s embodied knowledge, play, and public claims in rethinking public art and space. Barrett’s article insists that children’s embodied knowledge is not supplementary to but constitutive of the work. Vaneycken’s artist project foregrounds children’s “right to the city” in a rapidly privatising urban environment, reframing play as public art practice and spatial agency. Fan and Garcia Bravo extend these questions of participation through temporary and mobile installations that led to a permanent riverside public artwork (featured on PAD 16.1 cover), showing how public art can generate situated civic knowledge. Together, these contributions ask who is authorised to shape public space, and how children’s practices might offer critical models for rethinking autonomy, authorship, and publicness. Close to my ❤️! Public Art Dialogue 16.1 Open Issue, 2026 Co editors: Peter Bengtsen, Brenda Schmahmann & Tanja Schult Photo credit for PAD cover: @snebtor 🔗 DM me for the issue link or for contributor profiles where available.

Esteban Garcia Bravo Vecindario I, 2026 wood, LEDs   Esteban Garcia Bravo (b. 1981, Bogota, Colombia) is a Colombian-American artist and scholar whose work bridges computational art history, digital media, and public art technology, exploring how code and light shape collective experience. He develops site-specific works that reimagine technology as a medium for placemaking, civic engagement, and shared wonder. He is currently teaching at San José State University.   MACLA’s 2026 Latinx Art Now! Exhibition and Auction is now on view. The exhibition culminates with our Live Auction, May 16th, MACLA’s signature fundraising event. 🎟️For Tickets see link in bio!

Introducing a brand new piece called “Vecindario,” inspired by hand-carved sidewalks in San José. The piece is currently on view at the @macla_sanjose and part of the great Latinx Art Now! Show. The piece will be in the auction on May 16, so please come join me and support the important work MACLA is doing in our bay area community. This piece is the first of a series of sidewalks, and the prototype for future interactive floor installations. Ever since I got to SJ, I was blown away by this practice of doing this sort of abstract drawings in concrete slabs to mimic tiling in front of residential homes…Is it a kind of abstract expressionism? I just keep thinking what each design might mean to the residents of these houses. 🏡

Recap from yesterday’s celebration of the 40 years of the CADRE media lab at the @sanjosemuseumofart and @sjsu -What a fun day to celebrate with our students, faculty, alumni, and art+tech community members through reflection about our past and projecting us into the future! Thanks to everyone who participated and helped to make this event possible. We had a symposium during the day, followed by performances and installations. These are a few of the things that we were able to capture… 🥳 #CADRE #newmediaarthistory

Super excited to get our #pearlofthewabash research featured on the cover of the current issue of @publicartdialogue Journal. Thanks to the editors for your guidance on getting the article to its best quality! A collaboration with Yifan Fan @f.yifan Article here: /10.1080/21502552.2025.2600775

City streets light up with vibrant digital art thanks to the ongoing collaboration with Orange Barrel Media (OBM) in San José. After many years in development, the ICA was thrilled to learn that the City of San José was looking to approve digital billboards downtown—especially since OBM works in close partnership with cultural partners in the cities where they have billboards and a portion of the proceeds get invested back into the City of San José’s arts budget.  Along with our other cultural partners, OBM has been showcasing ICA exhibitions. It’s been a great way for us to be more visible, especially as conventions make their way back to the city. We’re thankful for a city and partners that uplifts artists and cultural leaders, showing San José’s unwavering creative spirit day after day. OBM has also been showcasing the work of local teaching artists, which launched with San José State University CADRE Assistant Professor Esteban Garcia Bravo, whose work was recently shared on both current sites: The Performing Arts Center and San Carlos & 2nd St. We can’t wait to see future artist spotlights and to continue collaborating for new exhibitions.

April invites you to the #WeCreate408 Creativity Challenge! This week's prompt is #play! In March, @cadre_sjsu presented @freethrow_sj during #marchmadness, managed by @sjculture in partnership with @sanjosesports and @sanjosesharks . The partipatory projection mapping project invited fans to shoot the hoop and change the display on the @sapcenter . #Trophy celebrated bringing out the best in yourself and sports. Thanks to all of the partners, artists, and students! #play

Thank you everyone that made it yesterday to the @machine_aura album release at the #pearlofthewabash @visitlafayettewestlafayette 🌧️🌈💕

Recap from the workday yesterday restoring the #pearlofthewabash with Max. What a fun day playing in the mud with all the toys! 🤪 🌧️🌈🌕 #publicart #lightart

meet at The Pearl of the Wabash this Friday at 7! Esteban is in town and we are going to do a listening party for my new Machine Aura album. the album stream will play on machineaura.bandcamp at 7 so go bookmark that page and bring a Bluetooth speaker so we can amplify the album around the park 🔊 all ages are welcome/there is a shelter in case of rain

BIg thanks to our City of San Jose project manager Cynthia Cao @hownowbrowncao_ who went above and beyond to get us everything we needed to get this project done 🙏🏼💕 #sj26 #publicart