LOURDES DE LA RIVA

Statement

Over the last few years my work has dealt with themes of emptiness, impermanence and the trails left by things. I have focused on evidencing the trace of human activity in nature —and viceversa—, manifesting the consequences of this close yet not always fair relationship.

By way of traces and found objects, as well as sculpture, photography, video installation, I generate different recordings that converse on how nature keeps a registry of the trail of human activity, but also on how these traces of activity often stay unnoticed or are discarded by us, because being considered useless.

It is under these parameters that I work with fingerprints, tree trunks, iron, debris, sand, husks, seeds and leaves; cracks and stains in demolished houses; imprints and writings left by people, time and space, as is the case with moth-eaten books.

I am interested in extracting and moving these traces into the field of Art and evidence, reproduce and build relations and reflections on our daily actions in this environment that we inhabit.

 
 

I began my path as an artist in 1991. My first conceptual piece, Quathemallan (1998), was a turning point and an essential piece of what would become an important theme throughout my work: the relationship between humans and nature.

Using photography, sculpture, printmaking, painting, performance, video and installation, I expose the found traces in objects and the human trace unto nature and vice-versa, and the consequences of this relationship.

I extract and displace these traces and introduce them into the art field to formulate relationships between human beings and nature and reflect upon our day-to-day actions in our environment. I am interested in the aesthetics of destruction, memory, trace, fragility, and impermanence.

I have worked with wood logs, fingerprints, termites, paper documents, leaf fungus, pods, stains and cracks on walls, steel poles, debris collected from demolished houses, and volcanic sand from a recent eruption.

In 2008 I began the piece Made for China, a piece in which I bring forward a reflection on the looming reality of the devastation of our natural resources in favor of mass production and consumption. My proposal for this piece is to manufacture a limited edition of one million prints done personally, dated, and signed.

Since 2011 I have been working on the “Los Creadores Series” (The creators), departing from found books and wood beams inhabited by termite colonies.

I am interested in the resulting shapes which relate to maps and topologies.

My work exposes the new altered meaning that occurs from the fortuitous void left in the content of the images and texts.

After 11 years of working with termites, today, I can call myself the ‘manager’ of termites. Without any ‘artistic’ purpose, they work on the creation, and I show their work.