Daniela Rivera Hacia cuando (To When)

In the summer of 2026, Daniela Rivera, who is currently based between Boston and North Adams, will complete a new commission for MASS MoCA’s third floor gallery. Rivera’s work focuses on the migration of cultural objects, narratives, practices, and myths by addressing political, art historical, and personal histories. The exhibition unpacks ideas of transit and migration, both of which are key to the artist, who is an immigrant from Chile. Additionally, through the materiality of the exhibition, Rivera uses craft methodologies and materials to investigate the ways in which art history colonializes non-European traditions of making. Hacia cuando (To When), starts with the artist altering the architecture of MASS MoCA, itself an adapted mill building and former factory. To accomplish this, Rivera will create a second floor, comprised of tiles fabricated in pre-Hispanic fresco-like traditions. The history of fresco is complex as it developed across multiple locations from the 4th century BCE to the 1st century CE – ranging from classical Greek antiquity to pre-Columbian era Mexico. Rivera specifically chose fresco for its colonial history. For her project, Rivera will focus on Teotihuacán fresco, which she has been learning in Oaxaca, Mexico. MASS MoCA will hold fresco workshops, with the makers upholding these historic techniques, for Museum staff and locals in North Adams as a way to keep these traditional craft methodologies alive from place to place and generation to generation. This kind of collective making and reinvigoration of craft traditions is a way to teach, to make together, and to address the colonialist narratives present in these materials and their varied places of origin. At MASS MoCA, Rivera will combine this tradition but instead of its usual location on a wall she will shift the fresco to the floor. Further complicating history, Rivera’s frescos will resemble parquet flooring – usually associated with domestic space, basketball courts, etc.…