Pitzer College Art Galleries Presents Ceramic Artist Valeria Tizol Vivas

Valeria Tizol Vivas presents Aurora, a new body of work developed during her time as ceramic artist-in-residence at Pitzer College. Inspired by her grandmother Aurora’s life, this exhibition explores memory, cultural history, and the nuances of diasporic identity through processes of care, deterioration, and unity. The exhibition opens on February 1, 2025, at Pitzer College Art Galleries and will be on display through April 5.

Through works that evoke the physicality of caregiving for elderly family members, Tizol Vivas reflects on the poignancy of familial bonds maintained across distance and time. Drawing on memories and forging connections to her homeland of Bayamón, Puerto Rico, Tizol Vivas transforms Pitzer’s Lenzner Gallery into an intimate, visceral space—part bedroom and part closet functioning as a cleaning space—where materials seem to possess a life of their own, and the process of creation is laid bare. 

Her sculptures mimic the tender gestures and subtle labors involved in nurturing loved ones, revealing the enduring strength of familial ties across generations. They activate a lineage of magic-religious practices and embodied knowledge rooted in Taíno art and regional furniture making, illuminating how deeply cultural histories inform our sense of self. Honoring her grandmother, Aurora, Tizol Vivas reimagines familial and material languages marked by colonial histories and shaped by the challenges of Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the act of lifting weight—expressed through sculptural forms and bodily vessels—evokes a unity with the natural forces that sustain us. 

Aurora invites reflection on the complexities of diasporic identity and the depth of cultural memory. By employing mark-making techniques and experimental arrangements, Tizol Vivas explores personal and collective histories, ultimately reimagining narratives of displacement and marginalization. In doing so, she offers a meditation on care, inheritance, and the resilience of human experience.

Tizol Vivas is an artist and educator whose practice explores how material forms, ancient dialects, and time transform and hold knowledge of human experiences. Her hypotheses and observations transfigure the narratives and languages of displacement and marginalization through the instinctual nature and processes of the elements, materials, and forms she communicates with. 

The Aurora exhibition is presented in partnership with the Ceramic Artist-in-Residence program led by Professor of Art Tim Berg.