Gilberto Rivera, 2021

Gilberto Rivera standing in front of his works at MoMA PS1 as part of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. 

Rivera is a Puerto Rico-born, Brooklyn-raised artist. At the age of 23, he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. While in prison Rivera was exposed to different forms of art. He would practice to create pieces he saw or techniques he watched others doing, which is how his art career began. No matter what, he always gravitated to art; it didn’t matter what facility or mental state, he found a way to create art.