Interview with Lucia Riffel
We recently spoke with Lucia Riffel (they/she), an interdisciplinary artist based in Pittsburgh, PA.
Lucia’s work focuses on the ways technology influences our emotions, impacting the levels of stress we experience environmentally and personally. Through installations, animations, and horticulture, their time-based work exists in the margins, exploring themes of meditation, ephemerality, and environmental anxiety. They create colorful, patterned spaces in-screen and in real life to navigate the spaces between physical, digital, and psychological realms in their interdisciplinary practice.
We included Lucia’s work in a special curatorial project we did for Workscape during their International Women’s Day celebration in 2025. For our AI issue, it felt poignant to learn about Lucia’s practice as we deepen the levels of technological anxiety we’re inviting into our lives with AI’s ubiquitous integration. Get to know Lucia, learn about their artistic process, and see what they have coming up next.
Headshot taken by
1) What is your artistic process like?
My process varies a lot because my practice varies a lot. In recent years, I have re-conceptualized my practice as being time based more than any one specific process or medium. And although that sounds cute, to put it more frankly I generally work across 3D animation, sculpture, and installation, but I see all the end products of my work as time capsules. I take big breaks between projects, and during these down times I live my life, work a lot, and try to just exist and "wait" until I find myself collecting a lot of thoughts, images, or things surrounding some weird thing I can't get out of my head.
I spend quite a bit of time conceptualizing projects beforehand to set the general tone and intention of what I am about to explore. During this part of the process I make these mind map type drawings where I quite literally map my thoughts, connect them, and try to find the patterns I am most drawn to. I can never fully plan something visual, because to me that negates the process of creating, so my "sketching" is really just drawing mind maps and listing out different materials and motion paths I want to explore. Once I feel like I have a solid base of an idea, I go back and forth between building spaces in-screen using a 3D-animation software called Blender and fleshing out objects and materials IRL that will inhabit the physical side of the space. In recent years I have gotten way more into writing kind of poetic exhibition statements to accompany my work as well. I see these as a way to describe and place someone in the headspace I am creating rather than describe what is actually in the exhibition. Even though I do a lot of conceptual planning on the forefront to figure out what is driving me to make something, I never really understand a body of work until a few months or years after creating it.
“tear eaters (lachryphagy)” by Lucia Riffel
2) Where do you draw inspiration?
I walk a lot and I consume a lot of media—these are definitely my largest sources of inspiration. I take a lot of "still" videos of small movements I see out in the world like shifting lights, bugs, birds, worms, clouds, etc, and I use these as movement references when I go to animate. More recently I have been documenting interesting tags and writings I see on my walks as well. I'm also pretty chronically online and very invested in meme culture, and I think it's really fascinating how nuanced the subtle references and different genres of humor can become through years of growth and permutation online. I also like to read books I categorize as "climate fiction," which are basically soft sci-fi motifs centered around post/during climate apocalyptic futures.
3) What is the purpose of the work you make?
To get people to slow down.
4) What is the most meaningful work you feel you’ve created so far?
I have had two really meaningful solo exhibitions in recent years. The first being blue skies at Bunker Projects in the fall of 2024. I made the work for this exhibition during a really pivotal point in my life, and it was the first show I had that felt "outside" and set in "daytime" instead of indoors and at night. I guess in a way it was a redefining moment for myself. I had just moved to Pittsburgh with no real plan, after having lived in northern Florida for almost a decade. The body of work I created for this show was extremely pattern dense and made me reconceptualize my entire practice as being time based instead of just "video" or "installation." I had talked about my videos as capsules of time and space before, but spending the entire summer growing plants, carving and drying fruit, reconstituting cardboard, and collecting rocks alongside making animations made me see time as the most crucial element of my practice across all media and as the way the work ultimately exists.
The second is my most recent solo exhibition, a red sun has water in its eye, which is on view at the Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, Delaware, until August 2026. This show feels dark and anxious and magical—honestly I am still processing a lot of the work I created for this exhibition, so I cannot quite articulate everything yet. I made this body of work in the depths of winter while processing my encounters with raccoons the previous summer and massive environmental anxieties as our country and planet fell (and continues to fall) deeper into catastrophe. I see this body of work as a kind of archeological site—a love letter to the future when we aren't here anymore and the planet can heal.
5) What do you have coming up next?
I'll be having a solo in August at Pullproof Studio and will be in a group exhibition at Almost Gallery in the fall.
6) How can our audience support you?
If you find yourself in Delaware, you can go check out my latest exhibition a red sun has water in its eye at the Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington. It will be on view through August 2026. Otherwise you can keep up with what I'm doing online at www.luciariffel.com or on IG at @luciariffel - I don't post a lot, but I always try to at least announce shows on there :)
About the Artist
Lucia Riffel (they/she) is a time-based artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. They create spaces in-screen and IRL to navigate the space between physical, digital, and psychological realms in their interdisciplinary practice. Riffel earned their Bachelor of Arts (2015) in Studio Art and Art History at the University of Minnesota, Morris, and their Master of Fine Arts (2018) at Florida State University. Their otherworldly works have been shown at Laundromat Art Space, Day & Night Projects, Carnation Contemporary, and Dream Clinic Project Space. Riffel is a National Endowment for the Arts 2022 grant recipient and has been awarded residencies at Bunker Projects, Laboratory Residency, Stay Home Gallery, and Drum Machine Editions. In recent years, Riffel has exhibited work in solo exhibition “blue skies” at Bunker Projects, duo exhibition “Terraform” at Shepherd University, and group exhibition “Constructed Realities” at New Media Contemporary. Their solo exhibition “a red sun has water in its eye” is on display at the Delaware Contemporary through August 2026.