Ramiro Smith Estrada (Argentine, b.1984) currently lives and works in Buenos Aires. He completed his Fine Arts studies at the Universidad del Museo Social Argentino. Specializing in figurative oil painting, he employs vibrant colors and defined contour lines to address themes surrounding social media, politics, and identity. His artistic practice explores the skepticism and uncertainty of the political and social system of the current context — a synthesis of glamour, street style, tattoo imagery, totemic symbols, and wallpaper-like compositions — reflecting the tensions that emerge under cultural and social pressures. He has been selected multiple times for the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Argentina and received the Williams Award in 2012. Estrada has held solo exhibitions in Argentina and participated in international residency programs, including RedLine Contemporary Art Center (Denver, USA), Panal Residency (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and La Vallée (Brussels, Belgium). His works are held in numerous private collections.

His work reflects on the desire of characters who exude a feeling of apathy, depressive hedonia, uncertainty and restlessness in the face of decisions that are conditioned by a post-capitalist system demarcated by social media and the feeling of belonging to stereotypical roles of the dominant culture. In his paintings, the characters often present attributes, postures and ornaments that indirectly allude to the resurgence of the New Age, an anti-work politics and superficial activism in a world with an urgency to renew debates on the politics of work and the class politics incited by the recent pandemic crisis.

His contemporary representational painting technique is characterized by images in which line and form are expressed through carefully composed strokes and planes of flat color. The sense of color and composition is evident through the characters he portrays as well as the populated backgrounds that give sense of context and invite narrative interpretations. Smith Estrada draws inspiration from politics, popular culture, music, literature and his close circle of friends.