Through Costume Performance And Memory Victoria Ruiz Turns Empathy Into A Form Of Resistance

Creative Boom: Inspiration Art & Culture Through costume, performance and memory, Victoria Ruiz turns empathy into a form of resistance The Venezuelan-born, London- and Rio-based artist transforms migration, spirituality and fragmented notions of home into vivid, handmade works that explore identity and belonging. Written By: Ayla Angelos 7 July 2026 "I find inspiration in empathy, but not as something soft or passive," explains Victoria Ruiz. "For me, empathy is a form of resistance. It is a decision to stay present with another person's experience and not look away.

I think art has the power to create that kind of encounter, where what is personal becomes shared and what has been kept quiet can finally be felt." Victoria was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and migrated to Miami when she was young due to the country's politics. Growing up between places stayed with her as both a memory and a way of understanding the world. "Home becomes something you carry in fragments, and I feel that much of my work comes from trying to give those fragments a body," she says. In 2017, Victoria moved to London to study for a BA in Fashion Communication and Promotion at Central Saint Martin, graduating in 2022.

This is when she really found her footing as a visual artist, understanding that her image-making is a way to reflect and communicate narratives she has experienced. In 2021, her creative partner Helena Cebrián invited Victoria to her hometown of Rio de Janeiro. "That year changed everything for me," says Victoria. "Rio gave my work a deeper relationship with my faith, nature and the possibility of finding life even in difficult circumstances." Since this pivotal moment, Victoria has been based between Rio and London, working across photography, costume, sculpture, installation and performance.

She often draws her ideas from carnival and magical realism – two forces she sees as holding life's contradictions. "Carnival holds the complexity of life in a very honest way. It can be beautiful and unsettling at the same time," she says. "It can carry grief inside celebration and give form to things that are difficult to express." The characters that emerge from her practice inhabit this in-between space – they're vivid, bodily, spiritually charged and rooted in a Latin American visual culture.

Victoria's process begins by reading, watching films, listening to stories and sitting with a subject until it starts to live inside her emotionally. "The narrative is the foundation of everything," she explains. "The message has to be clear in my heart before the work can exist physically." From there, the process is physical and intuitive, with pieces built by hand through repetition and accumulation until a costume or sculpture begins to feel like a living being.

In Coexistence of Extreme Emotions, from the series We Knew the World in Fragments of Color, the piece is at once one of her most visually arresting and most personally raw images. Against a burning orange ground, a figure in a Spider-Man mask faces an enormous, towering presence draped in yellow, blue and red – the colours of the Venezuelan flag. "I see myself in the Spider-Man character, facing this enormous presence that represents my country and everything I feel towards it. There is so much love there, but also disappointment and grief," she says.

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