Gertrudis Rivalta Santa Clara, Cuba | 1971

Gertrudis Rivalta's trajectory includes drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, video and performance. A graduate of the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana (Havana) in 1996, Rivalta has exhibited her work in some of the most important Cuban galleries and museums, such as the Centro Wifredo Lam, the Fototeca of Cuba, the 23rd and 12th Gallery, the Cuban National Museum of Fine Arts, the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, as well as in international spaces such as the Art Museum of Ponce (Ponce, Puerto Rico), the Cultural Center (Manila, The Philippines), the Iber-American Museum of Contemporary Art (Badajoz, Spain), Track 16 Gallery (LA, California), Gallery Adhoc (Vigo, Spain), and Espace Croix-Baragnon (Toulouse, France). Many of these were curated in collaboration with British art critic, Kevin Power, who pioneered Rivalta’s work.

Among her most acclaimed solo shows is Evans or not Evans (1998, University of Alicante) that revisited the work of the North American photographer Walker Evans in Cuba. Her oeuvre formed part of the 1997 group show Queloides, the first-ever exhibit in Cuba focusing on race and the place that Black people occupy in Cuban society. A recipient of numerous awards, Rivalta explores racial inheritance, the construction of identity, and the Soviet presence in Cuba at length in exhibitions such as the 2005 Fnimaniev at the Aural Gallery (Alicante, Spain). Rivalta participated in the Valencia/Sao Paolo Biennal (2008) with curators Ticio Escobar and Kevin Power and in collateral exhibitions of diverse editions of the Havana Biennial. In 2009, she participated in the itinerant exhibition, Creators of the 20th Century, curated by Marisa Oropesa, which included some of the most important female artists of the 20th century as Frida Kahlo, Eva Lootz, Candida Hofer, Méret Oppenheim, and Yoko Ono.

She has lectured at the Cervantes Institute in Berlin, the University of Alicante, the University of Jaén, Casa de las Américas, the University of Connecticut, and Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut, USA). Her essays and artworks have appeared in Caviar with Rum (ed. Jacqueline Loss and José Manuel Prieto), Art Cuba: The New Generation (ed. Holly Block), and Nosotros los más infieles: Narraciones críticas del arte cubano 1993–2005 (ed. Andrés Santana), among other publications.

Her work is held in collections in Cuba, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Gertrudis lives and works in Alicante, Spain.