Rose de la Riva’s work spans performance, installation, sculpture, video, and drawing. Her projects emerge out of intuitive association, historical research, image gleaning, and in situ exploration. De la Riva’s practice reflects on the nature of objects and their histories, dialoguing between the formal and symbolic, the material and the immaterial.
Her recent object-based bronze sculptures delve into the history of witchcraft, investigating through it histories of rurality, agriculture, and folklore. Weaving together political and personal metaphors, she investigates how myths and superstitions develop, and explores their enduring impacts on our perceptions and material relationships.
As a lesbo-queer artist, de la Riva is interested in witches, heretics, and demons, as symbols reappropriated by feminist activists, queer communities, and counter-cultures. Seeking a more nuanced and embodied understanding of history, she interrogates the roots of our collective imagination, and the ways in which fear, economic instability, and the vulnerabilities of the psyche, shape our beliefs about magic.
Rose de la Riva is a visual artist and cultural worker born in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal. Since 2016, she has been actively involved in artist-run centre networks, and has established a strong presence in Quebec’s performance art scene. Her work and performances have been presented in artist-run centers (Verticale, Le Lieu, DRAC, Skol, Darling Foundry), galleries (Art Mûr), and festivals (VIVA! Art Action, Festival des Faubourgs); at residencies (LA SERRE – arts vivants, Atelier de l'Observatoire de Casablanca); as well as in apartments and vacant lots. She holds an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University (2025).
