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    Spirituality, Nature, and Performance Converge in Victoria Ruiz’s Vibrant Photographs

    All images © Victoria Ruiz, shared with permission

    Spirituality, Nature, and Performance Converge in Victoria Ruiz’s Vibrant Photographs

    July 15, 2025

    ArtPhotography

    Kate Mothes

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    “For me, costume has always been part of everything,” says photographer and multidisciplinary artist Victoria Ruiz. “Culturally, I grew up in Venezuela seeing costume not as something separate from daily life but as something deeply embedded in it, especially through the lens of carnival. Carnival is in our blood. It’s not just a festival; it’s a way of expressing history, resistance, joy, and grief. A costume, at the end of the day, is something you wear that tells a story.”

    In striking, saturated images, Ruiz channels a fascination with nature, dance, spirituality, and African diasporic religion. Citing belief systems of the Americas like Santería-Ifá, Candomblé, Umbanda, and Espiritismo, the artist delves into the histories and cultural resonance of religion as modes of resistance and adaptation. These faiths often blend “African spiritual traditions with Indigenous and colonial influences,” she says in a statement.

    Currently based in London, Ruiz draws upon her childhood experiences in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, where she and her family encountered both nuanced ancestral practices and urgent political violence. “I grew up surrounded by characters, some from folkloric traditions, others from more disturbing scenes like military or police repression,” the artist tells Colossal. She continues:

    I realized early on that uniforms are also costumes. What people wore during those moments of violence or protest created powerful symbols. It was a kind of dark carnival. And I became very curious about what those garments meant and how they could inspire fear, power, or solidarity.

    In her series Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza, which translates to For Your Altar: The Divine Forces of Nature, Ruiz draws upon a seminal music album by Cuban salsa artist Celia Cruz, who incorporated ceremonial Santería music into one of her early albums. Para Tú Altar references one of Cruz’s songs about different types of flowers used to honor the divinity of nature.

    At the time, African diasporic religions like Santería, in which Yoruba traditions, Catholicism, and Spiritism converge, were largely hidden from view due to widespread prejudice and marginalization. Ruiz adds, “It could be said that Celia did not truly understand that what she was doing at the time was transcendent for Cuba’s musical culture and the religion itself.”

    Music and performance are central tenets in Ruiz’s work. Since she was young, she studied ballet, flamenco, and contemporary dance, but it was only when she moved to London and began collaborating with dancers that elements of her practice began to truly gel. “Seeing them embody the costumes—activating them with movement and intention—transformed my whole practice,” she says. “It became a way to make the pieces alive and to create immersive, emotional storytelling.”

    Ruiz works with a range of fabrics and materials like faux flowers and other props, depending on the theme of the series. She often reuses the costumes to emphasize sustainability. “Each costume and each image is a portal to the divine; it is a visual offering, a spiritual invocation,” Ruiz says. “They’re my own interpretations of how these forces have shaped and protected me. I’m still on that journey, and this work is a kind of gratitude, a love letter to those unseen powers that have carried me.”

    The artist is currently working on a series of protective masks, drawing on the ingenuity of handmade masks used during protests that Ruiz witnessed while living in Caracas. “At one point, gas masks were actually banned from entering the country, so people responded with creativity and survival instinct creating masks from water bottles, cardboard, even stuffed animals,” she says. “I found it so powerful: this creativity in the face of danger—this need to resist and survive through making.”

    See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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    Greg Corbino’s Fish Puppets Made from Reclaimed Trash Migrate Along the Hudson River

    2022 performance of “Murmurations”
    at the River to River Festival. Photo
    by Robin Michals. All images shared with permission

    Greg Corbino’s Fish Puppets Made from Reclaimed Trash Migrate Along the Hudson River

    June 21, 2025

    ArtClimateNature

    Kate Mothes

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    Beginning in the Adirondack Mountains and flowing south into New York Harbor, the iconic Hudson River stretches 315 miles through scenic valleys and creative towns. It’s also a migration route for numerous species of fish, from sturgeon and bass to herring and eels, which head upstream every year to spawn. Contending with habitat destruction due to pollution and the effects of the climate crisis, the survival of these fish is increasingly imperiled. Fortunately, art and activism have a way of bringing these urgent issues to light while also bridging local communities.

    Last weekend marked the inaugural Fish Migration Celebration organized by Riverkeeper, an outfit devoted to protecting and advocating for the health of the Hudson River watershed. Unmissable amid the festivities were a series of large-scale puppets by artist Greg Corbino, part of his ongoing sculpture-meets-performance series, Murmurations.

    2022 performance of “Murmurations” at the River to River Festival. Photo by Robin Michals

    Corbino designed a larger-than-life gold sturgeon to adorn a sailing ship that led a flotilla from Chelsea Pier in New York City up to Croton-on-Hudson, home of Hudson River Music Festival. Corbino’s papier-mâché marine creatures, ranging from oysters and sturgeon to a seahorse and a whale, performed their own migration, parading along the riverbank in both locations.

    The artist describes the collective performance as a “puppet poem of city and sea” and creates each work from plastic trash he removes from New York City waterways and beaches. Through partnerships with events like the Fish Migration Celebration and New York City’s River to River Festival, he aims to highlight the impacts of climate change and raise awareness of increasing plastic pollution in our oceans.

    See more of Corbino’s work on his site.

    Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo by Priya Shah

    Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo by Rhiannon Catalyst

    Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo by Priya Shah

    2022 performance of “Murmurations” at the River to River Festival. Photo by Robin Michals

    Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo courtesy of Riverkeeper

    2022 performance of “Murmurations” at the River to River Festival. Photo by Robin Michals

    Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo courtesy of Riverkeeper

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    CDK Company Makes Moves Through a Contemporary Art Museum to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bittersuite’

    All images courtesy of CDK Company

    CDK Company Makes Moves Through a Contemporary Art Museum to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bittersuite’

    February 26, 2025

    ArtMusic

    Kate Mothes

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    Championing the next generation of dancers in The Netherlands, CDK Company (previously) has made a name for itself through large-scale interpretations of pop music involving numerous dancers in playful, themed outfits. For the group’s latest video, director and choreographer Sergio Reis and team took on Billie Eilish’s “Bittersuite” from her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft.

    Set among paintings and installations in Museum Voorlinden, three dozen performers don pastel garments evocative of 1960s fashion, all wearing identical dark, bowl cut wigs.

    Whether moving through a gallery of paintings by Michaël Borremans, stationed inside a 4-meter-high Corten steel sculpture by Richard Serra, or synchronizing around the edge of Leandro Erlich’s “Swimming Pool,” CDK leads us on a vibrant, emotive journey through Eilish’s music and the museum’s art collection.

    Find more on CDK’s website and dance along to more videos on Reis’s YouTube channel.

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    Ritualistic ‘Moon Drawings’ by Yuge Zhou Etch Patterns in Snow and Sand

    
    Art
    #drawing
    #landscapes
    #performance
    #sand
    #snow
    #videoFebruary 10, 2022Grace EbertJanuary 2021. All images © Yuge Zhou, shared with permission“In traditional Chinese culture, the moon is a carrier of human emotions,” writes artist Yuge Zhou. “The full moon symbolizes family reunion.” This belief grounds Zhou’s meditative series of landscape drawings that etch wide, circular patterns in the beach along Lake Michigan and in snowy parking lots near her apartment.The Chicago-based artist postponed a visit with her family in Beijing back in 2020 and has since channeled her longing to return into her ritualistic performances. Filming aerially at dawn, Zhou traces the patterns left by the moon with her suitcase and allows the glow of nearby light poles to illuminate the concentric markings. Stills from the videos appear more like dreamy renderings than footage, an aesthetic choice that corresponds with their allegorical roots in the Han dynasty legend, “The lake reflecting the divine moon,” about the universality of longing.Having created five works in summer and winter, Zhou likens the pieces to “mantras suspended in a time of waiting.” Until she’s able to return to China, she plans to add more drawings to her collection and continue “bringing the moon down to me on the earth.” For more of the artist’s multi-media works, visit her site and Vimeo.February 2022January 2020July 2020February 2022August 2021
    #drawing
    #landscapes
    #performance
    #sand
    #snow
    #videoDo stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now! Share this story  More

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    A Dramatic Performance by Juilliard Students Brings a Socially Distant Approach to Ravel’s Boléro

     Maurice Ravel’s Boléro is a particularly collaborative composition in that it passes the melodic theme through a series of solos. The sequential performances highlight the distinct tones and sounds of each instrument, whether it be a flute, violin, or the anomalous saxophone. In a spectacular new project, dozens of Juilliard students who now are […] More