Gertrudis Rivalta

Thomas Nickles Project in collaboration with the Hemispheric Institute at New York University presents Selected Pages, the first solo exhibition in New York City by Cuban-born artist Gertrudis Rivalta, Guest Curated by Jacqueline Loss, Professor, Latin American and Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Connecticut.

Selected Pages delves into the women’s and girl’s magazines with which this internationally acclaimed multidisciplinary artist grew up in Cuba, in order to challenge their standardized paradigms of beauty, comportment, and the aspirations they cultivated within their readers. Rivalta’s re-scaling of five of the magazine’s covers using a mixed technique—consisting of sequins and oil on canvas—along with her bringing to life the magazine’s cuquitas (paper cut-out dolls) within dioramas surface centuries’ old legacies of national and transatlantic racial and class tensions as they are lived today by embodied Black female subjects.​

Born in 1971 in Santa Clara, Cuba, Rivalta's trajectory includes drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, video and performance. A recipient of numerous awards, her work explores racial inheritance, the construction of identity, and the Soviet presence in Cuba at length.​