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A seated photo of artist Valeria Nicolás Tizol Vivas. She wears glasses and smiles lightly at the camera.

Valeria Nicolás Tizol Vivas

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My practice defines my histories and my point of origin: the Caribbean. Through installations, sculptures, and performances, I slow cook my experience as a Puerto Rican/Dominican queer woman. I examine our spatial, spiritual, and bodily architectures to decode ancient knowledge as language and reimagine the forecast of future.

I use the scientific method to expand the theories embodied and embedded in our present. My observations help transfigure anecdotes of displacement, marginalization, and colonization. My explorations of form and the instinctual nature of the elements and materials I work with transform the digestion of my histories.

Valeria Tizol Vivas (b.1993, Puerto Rico) lives and works in Los Angeles. Tizol Vivas holds a BA in Environmental Design from the School of Architecture, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in Transformative Arts, M+B, Gavlak Gallery, Emma Gray, Adornment | Artifact, La Muestra Nacional de Artes de Puerto Rico, and La Galería Diagonal.

Tizol Vivas is an elemental and interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores how material forms, ancient dialects, and time transform and hold knowledge of her and others’ human experiences. Her work alludes to memory, cultural histories, traditions, elemental processes, and spiritual architectural sensibilities, all of which are investigated through self-introspection, material interventions, experimental arrangements, and mark-making techniques. 

Featured Artwork

"The filtering apparatus resembles the outline of my body holding a bag. The 5 outlines become a structure that holds and filters wild clay from the impurities. The filtered and hard clay is later used to cover the structure of the apparatus and transform it into a chimney." - Valeria Nicolás Tizol Vivas.
Valeria Nicolás Tizol Vivas. Filtros, 2021. Wood panel, muslin fabric totes, wild clay from Vega Baja PR, water, 3 x 6 x 3 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
Graphite on paper and the wall drawn by the artist placing her back to the wall and moving.
Valeria Nicolás Tizol Vivas. ¡Práctica!, 2021-2022. Performance: clipboard, kozo paper, tracing paper, charcoal, graphite, black jean dye, water, bucket, cloth, variable dimensions. Photo documentation by Kyle Tata and the artist.
Tubers placed around a bowl with a cheese grater. Surrounding this, there are consecutive rings of charcoal and bricks made of charcoal.
Valeria Nicolás Tizol Vivas. Remejunje-Requemar, 2022. Performance/Installation: Charcoal Blocks, Ceramic, Rhizomes (tubers), Canvas, Charcoal dust, Metal Drum/Cooking Apparatus, Cooking Utensils, Fire, Sancocho, Banana Leaves, Wood Panel, Acrylic, Variable dimensions. Photo documentation by Isabelle Abbitt.