Through surreal animated collages, Tatiana Florival builds imaginary worlds and scenes that contemplate society, culture, and other mystifying aspects of human life: death, nature, and the relation between the mind and the body. Her videos take place in complex physical sets she constructs of rooms, houses, and outdoor spaces. She assembles footage from clips of live actors (often herself) in these spaces, animated drawings and photography, and special effects. Florival’s films are equally anchored in the recognizable and the impossible. To create her fictional worlds, she observes, imitates, and interprets cultural patterns from our physical world, and translating those observations into imagined landscapes, characters, and stories. Florival tells stories with characters that already exist in our mental landscapes in a journey to understand, and suggest explanations for, natural yet incomprehensible phenomena.

Florival (she/her) has had a solo exhibition at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, NY and has participated in group exhibitions at Studio 9D and Kunstraum Gallery, both NY; Bijou Theater, New Haven, CT; and Expose Gallery, ISB Gallery, Woods-Gerry Gallery, Expose Gallery, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, all Providence, RI. She has had residencies at Mass MOCA and Alfred University, and she also received a Fellowship for Black or Indigenous Artists at MASS MoCA and a Parent’s Council Fine Arts Internship Award. The artist holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

IG: @tatianaflorival