;’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 remembrance.
Keysha sculpture and sewing as a material language and 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.
Artist Statement:
My creative practice is rooted in gratitude. One that is deeply somatic and living. Inspired by Puerto Rican knowledge and Indigenous ways of understanding data, I’m drawn to the relationships between body, memory, and land. I ask myself questions like, 'How does this piece connect to the body?' ‘How does the body hold collective memory?’ ‘How does that collective memory relate to the earth?’ ‘And can all these things lead us toward liberation?’ These questions guide me toward investigating my own personal archives. Data that lives in photographs, audio recordings, handwritten recipes, and even unspoken cognition. My sculptures embody these intersections of inquiry, DNA, and history. Much like the piece Grandma Moon, they explore continuity and the cyclical rhythms of nature. In grief, we move through similar cycles. The horsehair represents an offering, reflecting my interest in how found objects in art themselves can become acts of offering.
As a media artist, I explore ways to humanize media and technology. In la sal es buena pa’ las heridas, I embedded a screen into a sculpture, displaying a looping video of the ocean overlaid with a photograph of my great-grandmother. The personal and intimate soften the technological element, creating a bridge between media and memory.
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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 remembrance.
Keysha sculpture and sewing as a material language and 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.
Artist Statement:
My creative practice is rooted in gratitude. One that is deeply somatic and living. Inspired by Puerto Rican knowledge and Indigenous ways of understanding data, I’m drawn to the relationships between body, memory, and land. I ask myself questions like, 'How does this piece connect to the body?' ‘How does the body hold collective memory?’ ‘How does that collective memory relate to the earth?’ ‘And can all these things lead us toward liberation?’ These questions guide me toward investigating my own personal archives. Data that lives in photographs, audio recordings, handwritten recipes, and even unspoken cognition. My sculptures embody these intersections of inquiry, DNA, and history. Much like the piece Grandma Moon, they explore continuity and the cyclical rhythms of nature. In grief, we move through similar cycles. The horsehair represents an offering, reflecting my interest in how found objects in art themselves can become acts of offering.
As a media artist, I explore ways to humanize media and technology. In la sal es buena pa’ las heridas, I embedded a screen into a sculpture, displaying a looping video of the ocean overlaid with a photograph of my great-grandmother. The personal and intimate soften the technological element, creating a bridge between media and memory.
