Kariel Rivera, Student Work

Resilience

Digital drawings, printed, stitched with thread

30" x 26"

 

Statement:

My work explores the interplay between memory, healing, and identity through the lens of fragmentation and repair. I aim to communicate the beauty and complexity of healing, showing how fragmented experiences can unite into something uniquely profound and cohesive. This work invites viewers to reflect on their own journeys of breaking and rebuilding, where chaos and resilience coexist.

The drawing, Resilience, is a compilation of drawings that reflect a loneliness and isolation. The scribble marks are suggestive of anxiety and the turmoil of an unsettled mind. Many copies are torn apart and put back together again through the act of sewing, a sense of mending. The chaotic arrangement of sewn pieces, placed randomly and sometimes overlapping, mirrors the disorder of an anxious mind while embodying the act of repair and reassembly. The result is a piece that feels torn from a larger, unseen whole, reinforcing themes of disruption and transformation.

  

In Process:

Screen Shot of the digital drawings. 

One of the many arrangements. 20" x 18"

Reflection/Notes:

I was inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. I am drawn to its symbolic resonance with the way painful memories can become integral to our growth and self-understanding. Kintsugi embodies the idea that the process of repair can create something more beautiful and meaningful than the original.

In the beginning, I planned to experiment with ceramic resin, painting, and physically breaking pieces to reassemble them. However, this approach felt detached from my personal experience. Shifting mediums allowed me to preserve the essence of fragmentation and reconstruction while expressing something more personal and emotional.

The project evolved further through an act of literal fragmentation. I printed multiple copies of these illustrations in varying sizes, tearing them apart and sewing them back together. Some reconstructed pieces combine fragments from different color schemes, creating new compositions.