Daniela Rivera
STOP
October 30, 2020 - December 1, 2020
LaMontagne gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of drawings by Daniela Rivera.
As we collectively grapple with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, STOP is a candid reflection of the moment - an invitation to pause, be silent, to think, observe and process our vastly transformed reality. Since March and the beginning of the lockdown, artist Daniela Rivera has produced and accumulated drawings, notes and marks made during countless virtual meetings. These gathered fragments, arranged into layered and multifaceted drawings, have served as a way to process a new way of connecting with others, expose our collective vulnerabilities, and reassess our ideas of societal progress and free will. The show explores and brings new possibilities of meaning to a familiar sign and concept - a stop sign - in an attempt to re-signify what it means for everything to move towards a stopping point. STOP is an opportunity for building pause with others, to create pause for observation and reflection while leaving a trace of one’s own presence in the gallery space.
Artist Bio
I was born in Santiago, Chile in 1973. Later that year the military coup happened and life as my family knew it changed dramatically. Family members all of a sudden became enemies. Friends stop seeing each other and suspicion grew as an illness. While friends and family disappeared persecuted by friends and family members, the country’s economy grew tremendously, at least, according to economic indicators. In 1980 I had my first Sara Lee cheesecake and a barbie! Both signs of comfort and achievement. Little did I know that many of my fellow Chileans were suffering and I myself was experiencing unimaginable loss. I got to live through the transition to democracy while attending art school in Chile and was able to vote for president for the first time in 1994. Due to life circumstances I moved to Boston in 2002 and I have been here since. I was able to start graduate school at the SMFA at Tufts in 2003 and with this I was finally introduce to the art community here in Boston. I have been working nonstop since then, and just recently after my first Public Art project, a project that allowed me to connect with people in ways that I never thought were possible I am now calling Boston my home. I work from the experience of displacement and from my reality of cultural hybridism. If trauma and loss were at the center of my practice before, today I am empowered by understanding what I can share from my experience of displacement and my culturally hybrid identity.