SERIES
Ryan Esquivel is a Filipino-Canadian artist and designer based in Amsterdam whose work spans analogue image-making, painting, collage, and digital media.
Through processes that include Polaroid emulsion lifts—peeled, stretched, and layered skins of imagery—he examines identity, transformation, and the imperfect beauty of becoming. The material shifts within each piece echo the slow, intuitive nature of emotional repair.Esquivel’s practice extends into the digital realm with Source Message, a series of short-form video works that translate moments of lived beauty into a contemporary visual language. This expansion bridges the tactile and the technological, reflecting his belief that analogue presence and digital immediacy can coexist as meaningful modes of expression.
Through series such as Sexual Healing, Sanctuary, and his growing digital work, Esquivel continues to explore themes of queerness, spirituality, and self-reclamation—creating work that honours the human mark, the emotional trace, and the evolving ways we construct and witness images today.