Description
The Original
Ciemność by Robin Rivers is an original piece of mixed media collage on wood panel. I created this piece using archival photography, vellum, handmade papers, ink, and acrylic medium.
The piece measures 8.5×11″ (w/h) unframed and is mounted on wood panel. Shipping will be calculated based on location. Please note that colours and contrast vary between different monitors. The colours may not match your monitor’s display exactly. Additionally, copyright of my artwork does not transfer with purchase.
The Inspiration for Ciemność by Robin Rivers
Ciemność is inspired by an exploration of the January Uprising of 1863 on the lives of the women of Warsaw, Poland. In protest against the violent oppression of the Russians, women began dressing in mourning clothes, wearing black as a form of solidarity and preservation of the Polish identity. While the imperialists sanctioned the use of the Polish language, traditions, and other forms of protest, this silent revolt served to unite Poland against the imperialists.
I worked with CCZero imagery from the Polish archives as an homage to the centuries that my Polish ancestors lived under partition. Polish women and their fight to preserve cultural identity proved crucial to that identity remaining in tact over the more than 100-year-long plight of Poles living under partition.
Sources
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- Archiwów Państwowych (State Archives of Poland)
- Artist materials
- Handmade papers, vellum, ink, photo paper, gel pens, acrylic matte medium
How I source and care for historical materials → Sources
The Artist
Robin Rivers works across photography, collage, and text to recover the lives of women the historical record left out, overlooked, or misremembered—not as reconstruction, but as retrieval.
That work takes shape in the material each inquiry calls for: specific landscapes she photographs again and again, found photographs, writing, and archival fragments. The result sits deliberately between evidence and imagination: precise about sources while making room for intimacy, longing, and the gaps scholarship alone cannot fill.
Robin creates at Studio Albertine in Vancouver, Canada—on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples. This includes the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
