Illness, Love, and Memory

Feature photo by Christopher Wormald.

Valeria Tizol Vivas is an artist and educator from Puerto Rico known for exploring how material forms, ancient dialects, and time transform our experiences. In the spring, she turned the College’s Lenzner Gallery into an intimate space—part bedroom, part closet, and cleaning area—inspired by her grandmother Aurora’s life and Alzheimer’s journey. A former ceramic-artist-in-residence at Pitzer, Tizol Vivas not only created a stunning exhibition that memorialized the scenes, gestures, and efforts involved in caring for a sick loved one, she also tapped into her heritage, introducing elements of Taíno art and furniture-making to create an exhibition filled with vibrance, warmth, and an intense viscerality. One of “Aurora’s” effects, the exhibition description explained, was to give visitors a deep glimpse into “the powerful part that cultural memory plays in one’s sense of self.”

Learn more about current and future exhibitions planned by Pitzer College Art Galleries.