Tricia Rainwater

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/triciarainwaterart/

Website: https://www.triciarainwaterart.com/

Bio: Tricia Rainwater is a Choctaw multimedia artist based in the Bay Area, with roots in the Central Valley and New Mexico. Her artistic portfolio, which includes self-portraiture, sculpture, large-scale murals, and installations, has been featured at the Berkeley Center for the Arts, ICA San Francisco, MOCA Toronto, and with Muz Collective, among others. In 2022, she received a grant from the SF Arts Commission to trace the Choctaw Trail of Tears. Rooted in themes of identity and grief, her work offers a perspective through the lens of a Choctaw survivor. Through her art, Tricia confronts and resists loss by revisiting sites of pain, creating spaces for personal and collective healing.

Statement: In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I began photographing myself in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. "Ishki (Her Mother)" is one of the earliest images in this series, capturing my need to find solace in nature amidst the chaos of a global crisis. Through this and other works in the series, I delve into the sense of grief that arises when life moves around you, yet nothing seems to anchor you to the present moment. My photographic work explores themes of grief, loss, and violence. The colonial history of the United States has fractured my own familial relationships, creating distance within my family. A poem I wrote years ago reflects this, describing how my family and I "lost each other on purpose." In "The Long Goodbye," I sit on the bed my partner and I once shared, marking the end of our 11-year relationship and marriage. The photograph shows their moving boxes neatly stacked against the wall as they prepare to leave the home we built together. My expression is pained, clothes are scattered around the room, and "Ishki (Her Mother)" hangs framed above my head.