Reconnect/ Reconectar

Claudia Rivera Plaza

Reconnect/ Reconectar

July 1–August 9, 2026

Curated by Jillian Blackwell for SHED Projects

Claudia Rivera Plaza creates drawings and paintings alive in color. Her work is an extension of herself; her marks are confident and unquestioned, raw and brave. Originally hailing from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, Rivera Plaza builds with her own personal lexicon of imagery that reflects her background. Bananas, palm trees, and frogs become subjects, shapes, and patterns, vividly drawn with a hand moving at the speed of her thoughts. Sometimes Rivera Plaza creates imagined spaces and interiors, often empty but vivid, sometimes populated by cats. 

This exhibition includes several works that feature cats. Anthromorphized and looming cinematically, they cry, rage, and snarl, turn handstands and curl into spaces. These cats arrive directly on the page; their emotion is untempered, the feeling is visceral. Cats are often characters for the artist: sometimes cute, sometimes architectural, sometimes simplified to signifier, these cats morph to the artist’s need, whether to be a vehicle for color or for a feeling. Claudia Rivera Plaza’s paintings and drawings are both essential—economic in their use of mark, gesture, and shape, and exuberant—full saturation, full emotion.