Image: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
MASS MoCA is presenting 'Hacia Cuando (To When)', a newly commissioned exhibition by Chilean-born, Boston-based artist Daniela Rivera, now on view in Building 4.3, third-floor galleries. The project centers on an inclined floor made of handmade tiles fabricated in pre-Hispanic fresco traditions, turning the gallery into a space that Rivera describes through materials, sound and movement rather than a conventional wall-based display.
According to the museum, the exhibition explores the migration of histories, materials, cultural objects, narratives, practices and myths, while addressing political, art historical and material histories. Rivera’s installation uses soil, stone, pigment, movement and sound to question history and the colonial narratives embedded in those materials and their places of origin. By relocating fresco from the wall to the floor, and by hand-painting the tiles to resemble parquet flooring, the artist creates what MASS MoCA describes as a visual illusion that simulates volume and points to questions of simulation and its ethics.
The centerpiece is a tilted platform of handmade fresco tiles that visitors are invited to walk across. As museumgoers move over the surface, their footsteps become part of the work: the incline creates a resonance space, and contact microphones amplify the sounds generated through contact with the floor. MASS MoCA says this shifting, collaborative exchange produces evidence of migratory pathways and transforms the installation into painting, sculpture, site-specific installation and sonic instrument at once.
Rivera’s practice, as summarized by the museum, is rooted in cross-disciplinary methods that link craft tradition with contemporary installation and sound. The artist was born in Santiago, Chile, earned her BFA from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 1996 and her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston in 2006. She is currently Professor of Studio Art at Wellesley College. MASS MoCA also notes that she has exhibited widely in Latin American cities including Santiago, as well as in the United States at the Davis Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum and the MFA.
The exhibition is also being extended through performance. In October 2026, MASS MoCA and Rivera will present 'Hacia Cuando: An Opera', a cross-geographical experimental opera-performance created in the mode of an exquisite corpse. The work brings together Rivera with composer and sound artist Jenny Olivia Johnson, experimental luthier and sound artist Javier Bustos, and opera singer and stage director Sebastián Muirhead. The opera will use amplified sounds from visitors crossing the fresco floor alongside performers’ voices and movement.
Two related public programs are scheduled for Saturday, October 10, 2026. 'Hacia Cuando: An Opera' will take place in B4.3 from 1 to 1:30 pm and again from 4 to 4:30 pm, with tickets priced at $25, not including museum admission. A conversation titled 'In Conversation: Daniela Rivera' will follow at 2 pm in the Research & Development Store. The talk will include Rivera, MASS MoCA Curator Evan Garza, Johnson, Bustos and Muirhead, and will focus on the exhibition, its creative process and the development of the accompanying opera.
MASS MoCA says 'Hacia Cuando (To When)' was conceived with Denise Markonish and organized by Evan Garza, Curator, MASS MoCA. The exhibition has been supported by a grant from Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation’s Artist’s Resource Trust, and the museum lists the installation view as photographed in July 2026 by Tony Luong.
