Valeria Tizol Vivas: Aurora

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 the intersections of memory, cultural history, and the nuances of diasporic identity through processes of care, deterioration, and unity. 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 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. 

This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Ceramic Artist-in-Residence program led by Tim Berg, Professor of Art at Pitzer College. 
 

About the artist

Valeria Tizol Vivas (b.1993, Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is an artist and educator whose practice explores how material forms, ancient dialects, and time transform and hold knowledge of human experiences. Her work alludes to memory, cultural histories, traditions, elemental processes, and architectural sensibilities, all of which are investigated through introspection, material interventions, experimental arrangements, and mark-making techniques. 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. 
 

Related Events

Reception
Saturday, February 1, 2025, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Lenzner Gallery

Poetry and Sancocho
Thursday, April 3, 2025, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Lenzner Gallery

A night of poetry with readings by Valeria Tizol Vivas, Carlina Perna, Victoria Hurtado-Angulo, Sara Ellen Fowler, and Yahya Ashour. Valeria Tizol Vivas will serve home-cooked Sancocho, a vegetarian stew made with roots and tubers like yuca, cassava, malanga, and yautia, to accompany the spoken word and celebrate the importance of the cooking process in her practice.

Live the space
Saturday, April 5, 12:00 – 5:00 pm

Valeria Tizol Vivas will inhabit the space the closing day of the exhibition by performing work with objects within the installation, including sewing small ceramics into fabric, making charcoal drawings that will hang in the closet, and sharing stories in communion with visitors.
 

Image Caption

Installation view Valeria Tizol Vivas: Aurora at Pitzer College Art Galleries, February 1 – April 5, 2025. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Wormald.