Lissa Rivera

Last updated

Lissa Rivera
Born1984 (age 40–41)
Education
Known for
  • Photography
  • curation
  • filmmaking
Notable workBeautiful Boy series
PartnerBJ Lillis
Website lissarivera.com

Lissa Rivera (born 1984) [1] is an American artist and curator whose work examines gender identity, sexuality, and the construction of femininity through staged portraiture. [2] Her series Beautiful Boy, portraits of her genderqueer partner in period dress and interiors, has been widely exhibited and won the Magnum Photography Award for Portraiture. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

At the Museum of Sex, Rivera curated exhibitions that broadened the institution's focus to include contemporary art and underrepresented voices, including the first U.S. museum survey of Surrealist Leonor Fini and the museum's first bilingual exhibition. [2] [5] [6]

Early life and education

Rivera grew up outside Rochester, New York. [7] Rivera received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston [7] and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, [8] where she developed an interest in the social history of photography and identity, sexuality, and gender evolve in relation to material culture. [2]

Rivera worked in the collections at the Burns Archive and the Museum of the City of New York, where she also has taught. [7]

Career

Photography

Gallery director Sherri Littlefield views a photograph from Rivera's Beautiful Boy series at ClampArt. Sherri Nienass Littlefield at ClampArt.jpg
Gallery director Sherri Littlefield views a photograph from Rivera's Beautiful Boy series at ClampArt.

Rivera's photographic work explores the construction of gender and identity through staged portraiture. Her Beautiful Boy series, which began in 2014, [3] features Rivera's genderqueer partner BJ Lillis in vintage women's clothing within period interiors, performing various feminine personae. The series references old master paintings, classic Hollywood cinema, and the photography of Cecil Beaton, Cindy Sherman, and Larry Sultan. [2]

Collaboration between a cisgender female photographer and a genderqueer subject is central to the series. [2] Beautiful Boy's vintage aesthetic, evoking Eisenhower-era femininity, creates tension with its contemporary gender politics. The collaborative structure resolves the apparent anachronism, which positions Lillis as an active participant in his [a] own representation, rather than a passive object of the male gaze. [2] The work's impact comes from Rivera's conveying Lillis's evident pleasure, and the series's saturated palette, balanced compositions, and deliberate historical references. [2]

Her following series, The Silence of Spaces (2018), was photographed in a former seminary. The images show both Rivera and Lillis in compositions that echo Renaissance art, suggesting that exploring archetypes of the feminine engages both participants beyond a single gender identity. [2]

Rivera is represented by ClampArt in New York. [2] Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Danforth Art, [8] Kennedy Museum of Art, [9] Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, [8] and Newport Art Museum. [10]

Curation

Rivera served as Associate Curator at the Museum of Sex in New York, where she organized exhibitions that expanded the museum's engagement with contemporary art and historically marginalized voices. [2]

She co-curated NSFW Female Gaze (2017) with VICE 's Marina Garcia-Vasquez, an exhibition exploring women's sexual perspectives and desire through photography, illustration, and film. [11] She curated Canon: Juan José Barboza-Gubo & Andrew Mroczek (2017–2018), the museum's first bilingual exhibition, designed to reach New York's Spanish-speaking audience. [2] [6] In 2018, she curated Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire, the first U.S. museum survey of the Surrealist artist's work, including paintings, film, furniture, costume, and set designs. [b] [5] [13] [14]

Filmmaking

In 2024, Rivera served as producer on the HBO documentary series Chimp Crazy . [15] The series was nominated for Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Picture Editing. [16]

Personal life

Rivera's partner is BJ Lillis, who is genderqueer and has been the subject of Rivera's photographic work. [2] [3]

Exhibitions

Solo
Group

Awards and honors

References

Notes
  1. ↑ In 2017, Lillis stated, "I use masculine pronouns, I have a male body, but I also enjoy being feminine." [3]
  2. ↑ Rivera has cited Fini's work as an influence on her own practice, particularly Fini's inversion of traditional gender roles by depicting men in vulnerable, feminized positions and empowering female subjects through mythological imagery. [12]
Citations
  1. ↑ "Lissa Rivera". Photographic Resource Center.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Wolin, Joseph R. (December 2020). "Picturing the Gender Other: On Lissa Rivera's Beautiful Boy and Juan José Barboza-Gubo and Andrew Mroczek's Virgenes de la Puerta". Public. 31 (62): 75–91. doi:10.1386/public_00039_1.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 LaBouvier, Chaédria (May 31, 2017). "Photographer's Arresting Images Test Boundaries of Being Gender Fluid in America". Harper's Bazaar.
  4. 1 2 "Beautiful Boy: Photographs and Text by Lissa Rivera". LensCulture. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  5. 1 2 McDermon, Daniel (November 6, 2018). "Sex, Surrealism and de Sade: The Forgotten Female Artist Leonor Fini". The New York Times .
  6. 1 2 Clarke, David (October 20, 2017). "First Bilingual Museum of Sex Exhibition Highlights LGBTQ Life in Peru". Out.
  7. 1 2 3 Jump, Rachel (November 29, 2015). "Lissa Rivera". Aint-Bad. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Halm, Dan (December 17, 2018). "SVA Alumnus Lissa Rivera's Photos Challenge the Conventions of Gender Roles". School of Visual Arts.
  9. ↑ "Gesture of the Still Image". Kennedy Museum of Art. January 17, 2023.
  10. ↑ "Lissa Rivera: Beautiful Boy". Newport Art Museum.
  11. 1 2 Saxena, Jaya (June 21, 2017). "Figuring Out the Female Gaze at the Museum of Sex". Elle.
  12. ↑ Davis, Scarlett (October 9, 2018). "An Interview with Lissa Rivera". Musée Magazine. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  13. ↑ Diaz, Jenna Adrian (December 5, 2018). "Why Isn't Leonor Fini as Famous as the Other (Male) Surrealists?". Vulture.
  14. ↑ Mulcahy, Susan (October 28, 2021). "Glimpsing a Soon-to-Vanish Surrealist World in Chelsea". The New York Times.
  15. ↑ "HBO Original Four-Part Documentary Series 'Chimp Crazy' Debuts August 18" (Press release). Warner Bros. Discovery. August 2024. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  16. ↑ "Chimp Crazy". Television Academy. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  17. ↑ "Lissa Rivera Exhibition". Newport Art Museum. 2018. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  18. ↑ "Lissa Rivera: Interview". Never Apart. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  19. ↑ "Transamerica/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today". McNay Art Museum. June 20, 2019. Archived from the original on July 6, 2019. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  20. ↑ "Lens-Based Artists Document 'American Truth' in SVA's 2019 Alumni Exhibition". SVA Features. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  21. ↑ "June 2019 Exhibition". SoHo Photo Gallery. May 1, 2019. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  22. ↑ "Director's Desk: Throwback Thursday—Women to Watch". National Museum of Women in the Arts. June 11, 2020. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  23. ↑ "22nd Juried Show – The Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition". Griffin Museum of Photography. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  24. ↑ "Feature Shoot Announces Emerging Photography Award Winners". Digital Photography Review. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  25. ↑ "Lissa Rivera". Photo Kathmandu.
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