Cristina Isabel Rivera Sangama is an interdisciplinary artist, creative technologist, and community educator working across film, photography, immersive installation, and collective storytelling. Born to Peruvian and Puerto Rican parents and raised in the United States, her practice is rooted in ancestral memory, interconnectedness, and a deep commitment to justice. Through collaboration, she cultivates reciprocal modes of creation, centering shared expression, community, and art as a tool for collective liberation.
With over a decade in multimedia storytelling, Cristina crafts narratives that hold truth, honor resilience, and imagine futures beyond capitalism, weaving emerging technologies with collective memory to build immersive spaces for healing and transformation. She is currently co-creating a documentary with Palestinian artist Mohanad Smama, tracing his creative practice and community in Gaza. Grounded in friendship and shared belief in art as resistance, the project is an act of solidarity, a space to bear witness, hold grief and joy, and amplify Gazan creativity. More than a film project, it is a practice of staying human together, asking how we stay present and engaged amid violence and possibility.
Her work has been featured in NPR, Vogue, and Billboard, and recognized with a Knight Arts Challenge grant for Sound and Vision. In 2023, she launched Selva Sónica (Sonic Jungle) at Gray Area in San Francisco—an immersive archive exploring how resistance echoes through sound and memory across generations. Beyond her studio practice, Cristina facilitates storytelling workshops for youth, approaching art as a living dialogue, a means to connect, challenge silence, and reimagine the world with others, not for them.
