Biography

Elena del Rivero’s practice explores communication, memory, and repair through painting, works on paper, installation, performance, printmaking, and analogue photography. Based in New York since 1991, she transforms letters, domestic materials, and personal archives into meditations on intimacy, displacement, motherhood, and history. Her ongoing series Letter to the Mother, begun in the early 1990s, examines care, transmission, and mending. Her exhibitions include LA QUEMA at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid (2026); Transitar ‘LA QUEMA’ at Museu Tàpies, Barcelona (2025); HOME ADDRESS at the United States Embassy, Madrid (2024) and New York City Hall (2023); and The Archive of Dust: An Ongoing Project at Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma (2021). Del Rivero received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (2019), Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2020), and Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2015). Her work is held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Artworks

Souq Al Mina

Letter to the Mother

Elena del Rivero

Details: Letter to the Mother