Artists
Tamika Rivera
Guazabara: Amulet, wool, cotton, rope, 187.96 x 180.34 x 10.16 cm / 74 x 71 x 4 in. , 2025
Matunai Goeiza, wool, cotton, rope, 40.64 x 20.32 x 5.08 cm / 16 x 8 x 2 in. , 2025
Mata (skin), wool, cotton, rope, 193.04 x 40.64 x 27.94 cm / 76 x 16 x 11 in., 2025
E02147 Macú (big eyes), wool, acrylic, cotton, ecco stuffing, 132 x 56 cm / 52 x 22 in, 2022
K30079 Bibi Dawn “Mother Dawn“, wool, acrylic & cotton, 127 x 73 cm / 50 x 29 in, 2024
Based on Lenape territory in NYC, Rivera is a multidisciplinary artist /activist who creates art that evokes ancestral memories. Sculpture, painting, performance ,installations with a concentration in fiber art. Rivera attended Brooklyn’s Boricua College, a Puerto Rican institution, where she studied the social complexities of minority groups who are underrepresented in higher education. She explores her multicultural heritage with a multidimensional perspective. Creating pathways of playful exploration, acceptance, mixed identity, decolonization, gender equality and spiritual activation , Her Afro-Boricua and nomadic mixed European Roots hold space to support the statement “I am Taíno”, a movement giving her indigenous ancestors the right to exist inside of her through her work .
“Tamika Rivera’s series Warikè, Hekiti Warikè cuyo emerges as an exploration of care, interconnectedness, and the spiritual and social bonds uniting us as living beings within a collective body. Reflecting on identity—beginning with her own Taíno ancestry and diasporic Caribbean history—Rivera problematizes contemporary weaponization of identity, deployed as a source of division. Instead, her work enhances identity as a space of difference that sustains the potential for unity. Through knotted, interwoven, and stitched structures, she constructs morphologies that evoke both human and social bodies: assemblages created not through separation, but through mutual support. Each of the three works presented in the exhibition suggest the presence of individual parts, distinct yet
functionally connected, like organs within a living system. Rivera’s work resists constriction and fixed borders, proposing instead a model of identity rooted in growth, expansion, and connection—reaching toward all the places we come from, and all the parts that make us whole.”
Laura Hakel
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Tamika, a merit grant recipient for Vermont Studio Center , invited artist at SB Center Art Technology in collaboration with Santa Barbara Aerial dance centre. In 2022 selected as one of the Listed artist contributor to Hella Feminist: Museoexclusión, Tanya Aguiñiga at OMCA and for a group exhibition at Shirley Fiterman arts Center Tribeca NY . She ha exhibited and shared at Fort Makers Gallery, Future Fairs, Artsy, Private View Gallery NYC, Whitney Houston Biennial, Cooper Hewitt Museum (store), Arts Restore LA: Hammer Museum, Every Women Biennial and NADA House Governors Island, Featured in publications: Wallpaper, Site Unseen, Curbed, LA times, New York Times Magazine and Vogue. Rivera is founder of “Here Projects”, A collective of collaborators creating resource ,events , curated exhibitions, as a platform for change. Rivera shows her work at Fort Makers Gallery NYC, and continues to work on public and private art commissions, exhibitions around the globe .
Tamika Rivera
She lives and works in New York, United States
Education
Boricua College, Brooklyn, USA
Sunny (Empire State College), New York, USA
Selected solo exhibitions
2021 – Interweb, Nada House, Fort Makers, Governors Island, New York, USA
2021 – In situ, Fort Makers, New York, USA
Selected group exhibitions
2024 – Macú every women Biennial, La Galleria | La MaMa, New York, USA
2024 – The Thread Matter, exhibition with Dilara Erbudak, Huber Gallery, Zurich
2023 – HELLA FEMINIST, OMCA , contributing artist , Museo Exclusion Exorcism by Tanaya Aguiñiga, San Francisco, USA
2022 – By A thread, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, BMCC, New York, USA
2021 – Textiles, ACE Hotel Brooklyn, New York, USA
2021 – Bananas, Fort Makers, New York, USA
2021 – Goodnight house, Fort Makers, New York, USA
2020 – The planter show, Fort Makers, New York, USA
2019 – The dinner guest, Fort Makers, New York, USA
2019 – The blue room, Fort Makers, New York, USA
2019 – Every Women Biennial, La Galleria | La MaMa, New York, USA
2019 – di.ver. city, Next Level Gallery, New York, USA
2019 – HAVEN: Spaces of Refuge and Significance, collaboration SB Centre Arial Dance, SBCAST Santa Barbara, USA
2018 – Without Qualities, Private View Gallery, Fort Makers, New York, USA
2018 – “Here” here Projects, Next Level Gallery, New York, USA
2017 – Pandemonium, 43-01 Gallery, Long Island City, New York, USA
2017 – Whitney Houston Biennial: The greatest Love of All, New York, USA
2015 – You Deserve to be Here, Venice, USA
2014 – Wanted exhibition, New York, USA
2014 – Architectural Digest show, Patrick Weder, sculpture, New York, USA
2013 – Artist restore LA, Ermie, LA, and USA Westwood, Hammer Museum, California, USA
Residencies
2023 – Spring Pentaculum, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, USA
2022 – The Foundation House, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
2019 – Vermont Studio Center, USA
2019 – SBCAST, Santa Barbara, USA
2017 – DOC Art Net, Puicheric, France
2016 – Arquetopia Artist Residency, Oaxaca, Mexico
2015 – You Deserve to be Here, Artist Residency, Venice Beach, USA
