My artistic practice rests on an important ecological platform. Using different methods, materials and strategies, my works investigate the various components that have shaped our current relationship with the 'natural' world (animal, non-animal and plant). My research gathers perspectives that flow between the social, the political, the poetic and the personal. In this way I attempt to reflect the complexity of our relationship with our environment, while challenging the linear, hierarchical and static thinking of Modernity.
Dhara Rivera is a multidisciplinary artist. She holds a BA in Liberal Arts from the University of Puerto Rico and a BFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute, NY.
Dhara attended the Whitney Museum Program for Young Artists in NY and continued her MFA Studies in Hunter College, NY.
She pursued a year of post graduate Studies in Public Space at the University of Barcelona (UB) and in the year 2000 Dhara was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.
Dhara's production of the last decades is based on a strong ecological platform that questions the relationship between the human being, the concept of nature and the environment, focusing on the issue of water. She has realized ‘performative actions’ like Homenaje al Pterocarpus (Dorado,PR 2009), A la miri, meri, mir (El Salto de Juancatlán, Guadalajara,Mx 2010), Cosiendo agua (Margarita Creek, San Juan, PR 2010) and Río y respiro (Río Grande de Loíza 2013). Ojos de agua (Río Grande de Loíza Basin - San Lorenzo 20015 –) presented in different formats and venues.
Her most recent exhibition Aves y Agüeros (2021) is the result of several years dedicated to the research of birds and the consecuences of the climate change affecting and destroying the environment.