ABOUT ME
Bio
Vivian Cavalieri is a conceptual visual artist exploring themes of social justice through small-scale assemblage.
Most recently, her solo exhibition From War to Peace: World War II Opportunity, Postwar Domesticity was on view at the Military Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery (2025–2026). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions across the United States and internationally, including WOVEN 2023, curated by Hambly & Hambly Gallery (Northern Ireland, UK), which opened at the Sasse Museum of Art (Los Angeles) and traveled to France. She has received the Boynes Monthly Artist Award (December 2024) and was shortlisted for the John Richardson French Residency Award (2024) and the Women United Art Prize (2025, Collage & Fiber Arts).
Her work has been featured in Art Horizons (2025, Vol. 5, Issue 3), Insights of an Eco Artist (August 2025), and aatonau.com (November 2024), as well as Visual Arts Journal, Collect Art, Artists Responding To…, Forget-Me-Not Press (Wretched), Modern Renaissance Magazine, and Art Seen.
Cavalieri holds a BA in Fine Arts from Harvard University and a JD from the New York University School of Law. She is represented by Collective Z (New York, NY) and Hambly & Hambly (Northern Ireland, UK).
Artist Statement
I am a conceptual visual artist working in three-dimensional mixed-media assemblage. My work explores themes of immigration, environmental fragility, and social justice, drawing on both personal history and broader cultural narratives. An international upbringing informs my focus on universal concerns, while my palette and visual language are deeply shaped by my Venetian heritage.
I construct highly detailed scenes using dollhouse miniatures, textiles, segments of necklaces I design, and found objects. While these materials may appear impersonal, they are carefully selected for their symbolic and often deeply personal resonance—such as a broken replica of Richard Nixon’s Oval Office chair to suggest a fall from grace, or a fragment of my father’s 1939 U.S. visa application, concealed within a composition addressing immigration.
The format itself invites dialogue. The small scale of the work draws viewers in, encouraging close looking. Museum glass enhances this experience, creating a sense of immediacy as if one were present within the scene itself. Increasingly, I extend these assemblages into installations, inviting not only observation but participation.
Across both formats, my work seeks to illuminate shared human experiences such as resilience, displacement, and adaptation, and to create space for reflection on the forces that shape our collective histories.