Daniela Rivera

Rivera (b. 1973, Santiago, Chile) creates installations comprised of paintings that exist in relation to and establish particular spaces. Inspired by decorative murals and frescoes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which often created the illusion of being outdoors, Rivera’s installations generate a physical experience that goes beyond the purely visual. Viewers walk right into the paintings, which often feature sky imagery. In her most recent work, Rivera’s sky is also a massive carpet, affixed to the wall at its highest point and spilling out onto the gallery floor.

Movement through space and time, the migration of people and ideas, and the way culture is transported and digested are central to Rivera’s practice. An example is the Memling carpet, a Turkish design now named for the fifteenth-century Northern Renaissance artist who used it as a decorative element in his paintings. Small blotches of patterned rug migrate into the great expanse of sky, suggesting an accidental intrusion of cultural elements.

Rivera’s painting engages not only the visual appearance of the rug but also its history and the technical process of its making, which she re-creates as she paints, knot by knot and strand by strand.

Rivera received a BFA from Universidad Católica de Chile in 1996 and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University in 2006. She is Assistant Professor of Art at Wellesley College.

LINKS
www.danielarivera.com