Daniela Rivera: Shooting Skies
Chilean artist Daniela Rivera uses the unpredictable qualities of painting to explore politics.
Rivera’s interest in the accidents that can occur while painting began early in her career. The notion of trauma and its unforeseeable quality have been present in her work since the post dictatorship period in Chile, where she graduated from an art school in Santiago in 1996.
A relocation to the United States allowed Rivera to move beyond those first years of practice and concentrate not only on the narrative aspects of the work and her personal history, but on the concepts behind the work. Rather than telling stories through images, she became interested in materialising concepts in her work. The notion of trauma, its unpredictability, its lack of context and its transformative power became the focus of her formal explorations.
In 2009, Daniela started working on a series of paintings titled Accidental Skies. She began by splashing or dropping different liquids over carefully prepared and painted surfaces. Her intention was to introduce chance over the deliberate and to abandon total control over the outcome and final product.
This new series – and title of her current exhibition – Shooting Skies is a commentary on the seductive and traumatic aspects of violence. By inserting the work into the discursive space of gun policies and politics in America, Rivera means to address these issues from an aesthetic standpoint and in doing so, will generate an experience that fosters dialogue around them.
Rivera was born in Santiago, Chile. She lives and works in Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA. Her exhibition Shooting Skies will be on display until Saturday 5 April 2014 at LaMontage Gallery, South Boston.
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