10 Questions with Yotvat Rieder Aviram

Yotvat Rieder Aviram (b. 1978) is a visual artist who left a longstanding, thriving professional career in executive corporate roles within Fortune 500 companies to return to her lifelong passion for art that engages with social awareness.
She primarily works with acrylic and ink on repurposed canvas, paper, and cardboard. Her practice explores the emotional landscapes of migration, resilience, and belonging, shaped by her life across Copenhagen, Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.
In 2020, Yotvat developed ReLiving, an artistic and ecological practice that intertwines physical and conceptual sustainability: she fully repurposes abandoned artworks and paints on them in their entirety, while drawing inspiration from selected elements of the original work, be it color palette, line, or theme, to build new layered narratives. Through this process, fragments of the prior artwork gain a resonance of their former presence, echoing the growth and reconstruction of an immigrant’s layered identity.
Yotvat is a member of The Hug international artist community. In 2025, she began exhibiting internationally, including Root 2 Fruit (Sept., Philadelphia), It Doesn’t Show (Nov., Haifa), Visual Art Journal Showcase (Dec., New York), Inner Fairway (Jan. ‘26, Tel Aviv), The Stranger (Feb. ’26, Tel Aviv), Women’s Resilience (Mar. ‘26, Haifa District) and Sounds of the Peace Piano (Jul. ’26, Ramat Gan). Her work has also been featured in the art magazines Odyssey (Oct., 2025) and Visual Arts Journal (Dec., 2025). Her works are held in private collections across the United States, Denmark, Spain, and Israel.

www.YotiRiederAviram.art | @art_by_yoti

ARTIST STATEMENT

Yotvat Rieder Aviram is a visual artist whose work centers on themes of migration, belonging, and identity, all shaped by ongoing transformation and the possibility of regrowth while maintaining an inner core. She is deeply committed to sustainability, both physically, by using abandoned artworks as substrates for new creations, and conceptually, by drawing on elements from original pieces to give them renewed meaning and visual language. Rieder Aviram’s process involves close observation of donated artworks from her community, which often carry personal histories and shifting meanings for their previous owners. Working primarily in acrylic and ink, she uses black contours, mosaic-like textures, and swirling forms to explore the fragmentation and resilience of identity, as well as emotional turbulence during periods of disruption.

Her art practice, named ReLiving, is rooted in cross-cultural experiences from cities such as Copenhagen, Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. These places appear in her work as emotionally charged, fragmented landscapes seeking belonging. The evolution of her body of work follows four stages: Storm (disruption and instability), Fragility and Resilience (strength from fragmentation), Belonging (the search for an emotional home), and Bloom (growth in new surroundings). Community is both a source and a solution in her exploration of stability as an immigrant.

Rieder Aviram is a member of The Hug international artist community, and her works are held in private collections in Israel, Denmark, Spain, and the United States. Since 2025, she has exhibited in numerous group shows, including Root 2 Fruit (Philadelphia), It Doesn’t Show (Haifa District), Visual Art Journal Showcase (New York), Inner Fairway (Tel Aviv), The Stranger (Tel Aviv), Women’s Resilience (Haifa District), and Sounds of the Peace Piano (Ramat Gan). Her work has also been featured in art journals such as Odyssey and Visual Arts Journal.

In 2024, Rieder Aviram left a successful executive career in Fortune 500 companies to fully pursue her passion for socially engaged art. Her experience leading global organizational communities informs her approach to art as a means for connection, storytelling, and shared resilience. Through her practice, she investigates the expansive possibilities of change and self-construction, both individually and collectively, demonstrating that fracture can be the beginning of a new path rather than an end.

Garden of Eden, Acrylic & ink on repurposed canvas, 120x90 © Yotvat Rieder Aviram

INTERVIEW

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you first came to visual art?

I’ve been capturing my inner world through line and color since early childhood. Before becoming a full-time visual artist, I held executive roles, leading communications and organizational communities in Fortune 500 companies, while living and creating across Copenhagen, Seattle, New York, Boston, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. These lived experiences shaped how I think about shared meaning, storytelling, identity, and the emotional connections between personal and collective narratives.

You’ve lived in several countries. How have these cross-cultural experiences influenced your artistic perspective?

Living across countries and regions shaped how I experience identity as layered rather than fixed. Each move added another emotional and cultural stratum to who I am. Migration rocks our core, but it does not replace it. New landscapes of identity build over time, expanding who we are, even when they bring chaos.
My artistic perspective grows from this reality. Through my ReLiving practice, I echo the idea that the past is not erased, but carried into what comes next, and that growth can emerge from fragmentation and layering.

Mediterranean Bloom, Acrylic & ink on repurposed canvas, 100x100 cm © Yotvat Rieder Aviram

What inspired you to create your project, ReLiving?

ReLiving is my artistic practice of creating new paintings on abandoned artworks, combining material repurposing with conceptual renewal. I work on the original surfaces while allowing visual and emotional traces of the original work to shape what comes next. For me, this is about continuity, transformation, and respect for what already exists.
I grew up with sustainability as a way of life. My parents practiced it naturally in everyday choices. My grandparents arrived as immigrants with almost nothing, and they repaired, reused, and worked with what was available. Nothing was disposable. Objects were adapted, reshaped, and given extended life. That mindset shaped how I see materials, memory, and change. ReLiving grows directly from that inheritance.

Why is working with recycled canvases and abandoned artworks important to you?

Many of these artworks once hung in people’s homes for decades. They carry stories, memories, and emotional residue, even when their relevance has shifted. Often, they come to me directly from members of my community who no longer feel connected to them, yet still recognize their value. In some cases, people commission the transformation of their former artworks through my ReLiving process, allowing them to become part of something new while still carrying what came before. There is trust in that exchange. That gesture becomes part of the work’s next chapter.
Rather than discarding them, I treat them as vessels of meaning. This mirrors how identity works: what came before continues to shape us, becoming the ground from which new stories emerge.

Can you describe your creative process when you transform an old piece into something new?

The process always begins with close observation of the original painting and what it inspires in me. Sometimes I respond to a color palette, like the copper and orange tones that unsettled me and later shaped the artworks “Vulnerability” and “Resilience”. Other times, it is a detail or gesture, such as the cascading tablecloth that became stormy waves or the still-life flowers in a vase that became the flourishing form in Rosy Immigration. The original artwork disappears visually but continues to live on through homage and inspiration.

Intimacy, Acrylic & ink on repurposed paper, 35x50 cm © Yotvat Rieder Aviram

Vulnerability, Acrylic & ink on repurposed canvas, 60x45 cm © Yotvat Rieder Aviram

Your work often explores identity, migration, and belonging. What draws you to these themes?

These themes are deeply personal to me. My experience is that migration reshapes identity layer by layer, creating both rupture and resilience. Belonging is tender and provisional, an ongoing, volatile process. Through my ReLiving practice, I explore how identities are reconstructed over time and how fragmentation can become a source of strength, rather than something to resist or hide. It’s about accepting vulnerability in order to grow.

How does becoming a mother influence your art or your way of seeing the world?

Motherhood expanded my sense of time, responsibility, community, and care. It heightened my awareness of what we inherit, reshape, and pass forward, both materially and emotionally. I think more intentionally now about the emotional environments we create for the next generation.
Becoming a mother to a son sharpened my sensitivity to how vulnerability is often restricted, especially for boys and men. I reflect more on the emotional space we allow them, and on how strength and openness grow through one another. This has made me more attentive to vulnerability as openness and to the ongoing work of repair in relationships and within ourselves.
It has also deepened my commitment to repair in my practice. I am drawn to the idea that fracture is not an ending but a turning point, and that what breaks can be reimagined into renewed meaning and strength.

Your palette and layered textures feel very intentional. How do you approach color and composition in your work?

Working in acrylic and ink, I build a layered visual language that reflects the identity of a migrant formed over time. Black contours anchor the composition, holding the tension between foreignness and belonging. Mosaic-like textures evoke fragmented memory, while swirling forms convey the emotional movement of change.
Color begins with instinct. It carries atmosphere and lived experience. Often sparked by a tone or contrast within the original artwork, it becomes the starting point from which balance and rhythm emerge. I work toward a surface that holds both movement and cohesion. I also simply enjoy the tactile experience of building up the surface over time.

You’ve shown your work in different cities and countries. How do audiences respond to your themes of fragility and reconstruction?

What moves me is the depth and universality of the response. Across cultures, viewers recognize their own experiences of transition, rebuilding, endurance, and renewal within the artwork. Conversations often unfold around personal histories, migration, family memory, or moments of profound change.
There is also a physical response. Some of the more tactile works draw people closer; many instinctively reach out to touch the layered surfaces. What varies
across cultures is how quickly they stop themselves. That shared impulse to connect, and the awareness that follows, humbles me. It creates a space for direct human encounter.

What projects or ideas are you excited to explore next?

I’m interested in expanding ReLiving into broader narrative formats, including installations, publications, and collaborative community-based projects that allow the stories behind the works to surface more visibly.
I’m also exploring the dialogue between tactile painting and digital storytelling, including the use of AI as a tool for layered interpretation and visual transformation. This exploration extends my ongoing interest in memory, movement, and change across both physical and digital spaces.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.

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