KEYSHA RIVERA
DESIGNS:
Island Tank for Maui
soft sculptures
Digital Work
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Past Shows:
Ghostly Makers at Burnaby Gallery
Holding Pattern at KMAC
Museum
Bio:
Keysha Rivera is a textile and media artist of Afro-Indigenous (Taíno) ancestry. Rivera combines traditional craft and contemporary digital technologies. Her work revolves around cultural preservation and the configuration of displaced histories.
Her work being rooted in the connection of material and process, she creates soft sculptures, paintings, and installations that point to the conversation around the vulnerability of home, the bodily connection to nature, and the tenderness of memory and remembrance. Her familial research acts as a guide for the creation of works. Her art functions as a contemporary form of resistance to the present-day realities by centering Puerto Rican autonomy.
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Artist Statement:
My recent creative process has shifted towards building soft sculptures using photos. This process emerged as a reaction to the restrictions of initially painting on canvas, making illustrations, and using traditional ways of archiving memory. Rather than working within a defined area and material, I like exploring different mediums, materials, shapes, and sizes. Exploring fabric altering by shifting from 2D to 3D or fabric layering has been instrumental in finding myself in my work.
The freedom afforded by this process has impacted the way I use the material to form stories through sculpture and creation. In other words, in a way, I like to corrupt the original form and make something else. The new form then maintains a sense of mysterious familiarity.
My profound fascination lies in the symbiotic relationship between art, creation, and our intrinsic connection to earth and nature, which serves as the heart and soul of my artistic practice. Within my body of work, you will find sculptures printed on hemp fabric meticulously crafted to replicate the intricate ventricles of organs, sculptures that mirror the labyrinthine roots of trees, and sculptures that delicately capture the essence of fungi's spore-filled realms.
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Keysha Rivera is a textile and media artist of Afro-Indigenous (Taíno) ancestry. Rivera combines traditional craft and contemporary digital technologies. Her work revolves around cultural preservation and the configuration of displaced histories.
Her work being rooted in the connection of material and process, she creates soft sculptures, paintings, and installations that point to the conversation around the vulnerability of home, the bodily connection to nature, and the tenderness of memory and remembrance. Her familial research acts as a guide for the creation of works. Her art functions as a contemporary form of resistance to the present-day realities by centering Puerto Rican autonomy.
︎
Artist Statement:
My recent creative process has shifted towards building soft sculptures using photos. This process emerged as a reaction to the restrictions of initially painting on canvas, making illustrations, and using traditional ways of archiving memory. Rather than working within a defined area and material, I like exploring different mediums, materials, shapes, and sizes. Exploring fabric altering by shifting from 2D to 3D or fabric layering has been instrumental in finding myself in my work.
The freedom afforded by this process has impacted the way I use the material to form stories through sculpture and creation. In other words, in a way, I like to corrupt the original form and make something else. The new form then maintains a sense of mysterious familiarity.
My profound fascination lies in the symbiotic relationship between art, creation, and our intrinsic connection to earth and nature, which serves as the heart and soul of my artistic practice. Within my body of work, you will find sculptures printed on hemp fabric meticulously crafted to replicate the intricate ventricles of organs, sculptures that mirror the labyrinthine roots of trees, and sculptures that delicately capture the essence of fungi's spore-filled realms.
