©Nancy E. Rivera

In her series No Present to Remember, artist Nancy E. Rivera reflects on childhood family photographs while engaging with the landscapes of her present life, crafting a fascinating dialogue between her younger and current self. These delicate sculptures portray a youthful Rivera, reimagined through the hands and creative sensibilities shaped by years of lived experience—a story rooted in immigration, memory, and personal history. These works offer an alluring meditation on discovering one’s identity amid uncertainty—a sentiment that resonates with those navigating their own immigration journeys.

Nancy E. Rivera is a visual artist whose practice intertwines photography, fiber art, and sculpture to explore themes of identity, memory, and citizenship. Her work is deeply informed by her family’s immigration journey, including twelve years of living undocumented in the United States.

Rivera’s work has been featured in prominent group and two-person exhibitions across the U.S., including Spring/Break Art Show in Los Angeles, PS122 in New York City, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, and Granary Arts in Ephraim, Utah. Her pieces are held in private and public collections such as the Center for Creative Photography, Hood Museum of Art, and the State of Utah Alice Merrill Horne Art Collection.

She is a 2025 Visual Arts Fellow with the Utah Division of Arts & Museums and a recipient of the Center for Photographic Art Emerging Artist Grant. In 2024, she was also recognized with CENTER’s Jay and Susie Tyrrell Excellence in Works by Hand Award and is an alumna of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Leadership Institute. Rivera has served as a guest lecturer, juror, and board member for organizations including 516 Arts, Brigham Young University, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Salt Lake City Arts Council.

In addition to her artistic practice and community engagement, she serves as Director of Planning & Program at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, where she oversees the museum’s programmatic initiatives, including exhibition planning in support of the institution’s mission and core values.

Follow Nancy on Instagram: @_nancy_rivera

©Nancy E. Rivera

No Present to Remember

No Present to Remember is a series of mixed media sculptures created from family photographs from my childhood in Mexico, combined with salt sourced from Great Salt Lake and Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, my home for the last twenty-five years. The collection of photographs from which this series originates is among the few keepsakes I carried with me when my family relocated to the U.S. in 1999 when I was twelve years old. Revisiting these snapshots as an adult, I became keenly aware of the contrasting circumstances that molded my upbringing within two distinct geographical locations. Each piece in No Present To Remember is a reflection on how these disparate landscapes have shaped my identity and experiences over the years.

This series required me to enlarge and print my family photographs on cotton cloth and submerge them in local saltwater. As the cloth slowly dries, it absorbs the salt, resulting in a desaturation of the images and creating a malleable medium for sculpting before it dries. Through careful manipulation of the 2D images while sculpting the cloth support, I both obscure and reveal details, echoing the ways in which memories can transform and shift in our minds over time. This deliberate distortion of the photographs serves as a metaphor for the subjective nature of memory, which is a reflection on the ways in which ongoing individual experiences and the environments in which they take root shape one’s interpretations of the past.

©Nancy E. Rivera

Daniel George: I am always curious about where projects begin. Your artistic practice is very autobiographical, and No Place to Remember feels like a natural step in your broader exploration of memory, identity, and citizenship. What led to this specific series coming to fruition?

Nancy E. Rivera: In the summer of 2020, I was preparing work for a two-person exhibition, exploring themes of family and memory. I knew I wanted to use my childhood family photographs, but I wasn’t yet sure how. While brainstorming, I thought back to summer walks along Great Salt Lake and how my rolled-up pant legs would dry stiff with salt—and the idea of creating sculptures through this process took shape.

In the studio, I submerged small pieces of muslin in lake water. As the water evaporated, the salt crystallized, leaving the fabric rigid and textured. An unexpectedly magical moment was when I saw the salt shimmering in direct sunlight—something that is nearly impossible to capture on camera. Conceptually, I felt that bringing together photographs of my childhood in Mexico with water from Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats felt like a compelling way to create a dialogue between my past and present.

To create the pieces, I worked with a fine arts printing studio and after experimenting with several fabric options, I ultimately chose broadcloth for its similarity to the muslin I had first used in my studio. The initial series of small sculptures came together that summer. Then, in 2023, I returned to the project and developed a second series of larger pieces, which I combined in pairs of two to create composite forms that offered more surreal, layered narratives.

©Nancy E. Rivera

DG: I have been thinking about this project as it relates to immigration process and the emphasis on documentation. Specifically, the concept of proof of identity. You write that the photographs used for this series were among the few items that you brought with you when you came to the United States in 1999 at age 12. And while you were living in the U.S. undocumented for a period (according to immigration law), I imagine these images must have been very important in retaining a sense of personal identity. Would you talk more about the significance of these photographs during that time?

NR: At 12 years old, I didn’t immediately grasp the precariousness of our situation in this country, but once in school, I quickly realized that I needed to assimilate if I wanted to fit in. Around age 13 or 14, I remember looking through these photographs and impulsively tearing up any image where I thought I looked “ugly.” I’m not sure how many I destroyed, but I do remember rearranging the remaining ones in chronological order and sort of curating the album so it reflected a version of myself I felt better presenting.

At the time, I was deeply preoccupied with blending in and avoiding anything that might make me feel “othered.” In hindsight, I think those photographs became a way for me to negotiate who I believed I needed to be in the U.S. and who I actually was. They carried the weight of my family’s history and my identity before immigrating, but they also became objects I tried to control and manipulate in order to feel a sense of belonging during a period when many things felt confusing and uncertain.

©Nancy E. Rivera

DG: When I saw these pieces in person for the first time, I was immediately fascinated by their delicacy and the care and attention given to the sculpting process. Depending on the angle you view them, information in the photographs is obscured or revealed. Could you share your thought process as you were making these—and choosing what information to highlight/conceal?

NR: My intention in making these pieces was to defamiliarize the photographs themselves. I enlarged the original images, and once printed on fabric, their sharp details softened—most noticeably, the faces and expressions became difficult to read. I leaned into that quality, folding the material in ways that further obscured and distorted the figures.

A few of the images came from beach vacations, and for those, I shaped the forms to echo waves and the movement of water. I appear in every photo I used, and through the folds and curves of the fabric, I explored my presence within the work—sometimes surfacing into the foreground, sometimes dissolving back into the background.

©Nancy E. Rivera

DG: In your statement you write that this project considers how “individual experiences and the environments in which they take root shape one’s interpretations of the past.” In what ways do you feel the environment shapes the way one develops identity and creates an understanding of the past?

NR: When I talk about “environment,” I’m thinking broadly about both the physical places we inhabit and the ideological or social frameworks that surround us. After arriving in the U.S., I became aware of the labels assigned to us: immigrant, Latino, Hispanic. These were terms I had never associated with myself before, yet they shaped my developing sense of identity.

While working on this series, it dawned on me that these family photos—depicting vacations, celebrations, and get-togethers—could be anyone’s. By showing these simple, everyday snapshots, I realized that we often have more in common than our assigned labels suggest, and that those labels can serve more to divide than to define us.

©Nancy E. Rivera

DG: Whenever artists dig into the family photo archive, I am interested to hear if details/memories from the past are uncovered—that were perhaps faint or forgotten. In your statement you acknowledge that viewing these as an adult, you “became keenly aware of the contrasting circumstances that molded [your] upbringing.” Would you mind expanding on this—what you learned from revisiting these pictures?

NR: Earlier I mentioned how, as a child, I shaped my family album to project a particular version of myself—imagining someone in the future looking at those photographs. What I didn’t understand then was that the future viewer would be me, returning to them as an adult.

Revisiting these pictures brought back the “contrasting circumstances” that defined my childhood, especially the abrupt transition from speaking only Spanish to learning—and eventually mostly using—English after we moved. I was also reminded of the cultural shifts I experienced: growing up in the Mormon church in Mexico, where it was a minority religion, and then arriving in Utah, where it was the dominant one, only to no longer be members of the church ourselves. Those kinds of contrasts shaped so much of how I understood identity and belonging at that time.

While working with these images, I kept thinking about how this small set of photographs seems to contain an entire lifetime. In truth, they capture only twelve years—and I’ve now lived in the United States longer than I ever lived in Mexico. That realization made it feel even more important to reconnect with them as a way of holding onto those early memories.

©Nancy E. Rivera

©Nancy E. Rivera

©Nancy E. Rivera

©Nancy E. Rivera

©Nancy E. Rivera