The Bronx Museum 2025 AIM Fellow
kiarita
ARTIST STATEMENT
kiarita (they/them) employs found furniture to eternalize intimate moments of their chosen family’s rest and respite. Oil paintings of their loved ones sleeping are often hidden in drawers or behind cabinet doors, asking the intimacy of touch from the viewer for its painted intimacy to be revealed. Combining sculpture and assemblage with the paintings, the sleepers emerge from the picture plane and settle into the space, often adorned with objects that act as diaristic collage. The works frame themselves and take up space in their rest—touching upon notions of rest as resistance, queering family, and examining sustainable practices of care. The works are not singular, but belong together to create a space that is safe, familiar, and inviting. In their completion, these works become pseudo altars for intimate veneration.
Biography
kiarita (b.1999, Hackensack, NJ) is a Dominican-American multimedia artist based in Brooklyn. They currently hold a BFA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of Visual Arts and received a 2025 Van Lier Trust Felloship & The Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship. Their debut solo show, entitled home(body), opened at Hausen Gallery in Brooklyn, and they have participated in numerous group shows nationwide, with the bulk being in New York City.
