Bio:
Keysha Rivera (any pronouns) is a technologist, speculative designer, and poetic researcher of afro-indigenous (Taâino) ancestry who practices in the South. Keysha’s fusion of digital images, ancestral memory, and textiles is a type of visual storytelling and counter-archiving. Her work, rooted in the connection between material and process, creates sculptures, designs, and installations that explore the conversation around the vulnerability of land, the bodily connection to nature, and the tenderness of memory and remembrance.
Recognizing craft’s continually relevant and subversive nature, Keysha views its material language as an organic knowledge system and vehicle for healing, where craft becomes an expression of Puerto Rican and Indigenous autonomy and futurity. Keysha has an undergraduate degree in Biology and Graphic Design. She’s been a resident at Mass Moca, has been awarded a Craft Innovator Grant, and has participated in a show at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
Keysha is also the founder of earth labs which supports businesses and organizational marketing efforts through storytelling, narrative strategy, and community building.
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Artist Statement:
Using my mother's film photo archive, my creative process has shifted towards textile sculptural world-building. This process emerged as a reaction to the restrictions of conventional archiving methods and instead focuses on recording memory as data. My practices provides a space for projects that involve searching for details in personal archives and being inspired by the idea of research as ceremony.
My process typically starts with exploring my family’s film collection and altering the images. I’m fascinated by the intersection of written language and sculpture. Often, I start by jotting down a sentence that is a snapshot of my imagination, using it as the inspiration for my sculptural work. These pieces become physical manifestations of poetry, with sculpted forms that mirror or engage with the written word. Each sculpture offers a way to observe and make sense of personal data in a shifting world—serving as tactile maps that navigate memory, trace moments, and hold fragments of history and joy. Through this process of wayfinding, these data fragments become part of a broader method of creating spatial narratives—storytelling that is embodied, layered, and deeply rooted in emotion and lived experience.
I like to think my practice is rooted in the idea of creating in the spirit of the wind, responding to the conditions and feelings of the moment.
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Keysha Rivera (any pronouns) is a technologist, speculative designer, and poetic researcher of afro-indigenous (Taâino) ancestry who practices in the South. Keysha’s fusion of digital images, ancestral memory, and textiles is a type of visual storytelling and counter-archiving. Her work, rooted in the connection between material and process, creates sculptures, designs, and installations that explore the conversation around the vulnerability of land, the bodily connection to nature, and the tenderness of memory and remembrance.
Recognizing craft’s continually relevant and subversive nature, Keysha views its material language as an organic knowledge system and vehicle for healing, where craft becomes an expression of Puerto Rican and Indigenous autonomy and futurity. Keysha has an undergraduate degree in Biology and Graphic Design. She’s been a resident at Mass Moca, has been awarded a Craft Innovator Grant, and has participated in a show at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
Keysha is also the founder of earth labs which supports businesses and organizational marketing efforts through storytelling, narrative strategy, and community building.
︎
Artist Statement:
Using my mother's film photo archive, my creative process has shifted towards textile sculptural world-building. This process emerged as a reaction to the restrictions of conventional archiving methods and instead focuses on recording memory as data. My practices provides a space for projects that involve searching for details in personal archives and being inspired by the idea of research as ceremony.
My process typically starts with exploring my family’s film collection and altering the images. I’m fascinated by the intersection of written language and sculpture. Often, I start by jotting down a sentence that is a snapshot of my imagination, using it as the inspiration for my sculptural work. These pieces become physical manifestations of poetry, with sculpted forms that mirror or engage with the written word. Each sculpture offers a way to observe and make sense of personal data in a shifting world—serving as tactile maps that navigate memory, trace moments, and hold fragments of history and joy. Through this process of wayfinding, these data fragments become part of a broader method of creating spatial narratives—storytelling that is embodied, layered, and deeply rooted in emotion and lived experience.
I like to think my practice is rooted in the idea of creating in the spirit of the wind, responding to the conditions and feelings of the moment.
