Victoria Ruiz has been named the overall winner of the ND Awards 2024 in Non-Professional section. Rooted in personal history and shaped by activism, Ruiz’s work invites reflection on the ties between people, place, and the divine. Her award-winning series Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza pays tribute to Afro-diasporic religions and the sacred connection between humanity and the natural world. In this exclusive interview, she reflects on the challenges and inspirations behind her practice, offering insight into her creative process and evolving artistic vision.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers meeting you for the first time?
I am a Venezuelan multidisciplinary artist and graduate of Central Saint Martins (2022), working across photography, sculptural garments, and live performance. My work explores themes of identity, cultural resistance, and the intersection between spirituality and nature. By blending photography with handcrafted wearable sculptures, I create powerful imagery that reflects my Latin American heritage, revisiting childhood memories and giving voice to marginalized communities.
My artistic vision is deeply rooted in activism, shaped by my experience growing up under censorship in Venezuela and as an immigrant in Miami. Through a carnivalesque lens, I celebrate the resilience of my community while challenging socio-political narratives. My recent work emphasizes the interconnectedness of all beings and the divine presence in nature, aiming to foster reflection, empathy, and dialogue about the complexities of the human experience and environmental sensitivity.
Your decision to pair photography with wearable sculpture creates a vivid platform for questioning traditional narratives around identity, cultural resistance, spirituality, and nature. What first inspired you to create Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza?
My decision to pair photography with wearable sculptures comes from a deeply personal and spiritual place. Over time, I’ve developed a technique that merges both elements—photography and sculptural costume-making—as a way of storytelling. These wearable sculptures are hand-crafted by me and serve as extensions of the body, symbolizing identity, spirituality, and ancestral memory. They are not just props; they are sacred vessels that help me construct visual narratives rooted in my lived experiences and cultural background. In my practice, this approach feels essential—a way to build an image from the ground up and communicate through form, symbolism, and ritual. I call myself an image maker because, for me, the subject and the message are the root of every visual outcome—they are the essence of the story. It’s not just about capturing a photograph; it’s about constructing what lives within it.
Para Tú Altar was born from my deep connection to spirituality. I’ve always been a spiritual person, and in Latin America—where I’m from, Venezuela—spirituality and religion are deeply embedded in the culture. You see this fusion of Indigenous, African, and European traditions across the region, from Venezuela to Brazil and Cuba among others. They’ve shaped not only our belief systems but also our visual languages, our celebrations, and our resistance.
At the time I created Para Tú Altar, I was immersed in this world of spiritual inquiry. I felt a strong calling to honor the divine forces that inspire and guide me. The series is an homage to the Orixás and the energies that I believe live within the natural world and move through us. For me, nature and spirituality are not separate; they are part of the same cosmological fabric. There is a thread, a divine current, that links us all together—humans, plants, animals, earth, water, wind. This understanding is foundational in many Afro-diasporic religions, and it has deeply informed the conceptual and visual language of this series.
Creating this work was about reconnecting with ancestral wisdom and re-centering it in contemporary art. I wanted to create a platform that not only honored these divine entities but also challenged colonial and patriarchal narratives around identity and spirituality. Through photography and sculpture, Para Tú Altar becomes a living altar—a visual offering that embodies resistance, reverence, and the profound interconnectedness of all things.
While working on the series, what was the single greatest difficulty you faced, and how did you overcome it?
One of the greatest challenges I faced while working on Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza was the complexity of bringing together so many different layers—research, personal reflection, design, performance, and photography—into a cohesive and meaningful visual story. My practice is rooted in both academic research and emotional truth. I spend months immersing myself in texts, poems, and documentaries, but just as much time looking inward, revisiting my own experiences and the stories of my community to shape what I want to communicate.
From that foundation, I design and hand-make every costume and sculptural garment you see. I build each character from scratch, often working alone for weeks to craft the visual language that embodies the series’ spirit. And then there’s the process of finding the right people to bring it all to life—performers who deeply connect with the narrative. I was incredibly lucky to work with dancers who truly helped animate these divine forces in a way that felt honest and powerful.
What kept me going through every challenge was the clarity of purpose. Telling stories from Latin America, from my heritage and personal truth, is my deepest motivation. When you’re driven by something that meaningful, no obstacle feels insurmountable. With a clear intention, the right team, and a pure heart, I truly believe anything is possible.
How do you envision this project – or your broader photographic practice – evolving in the coming years?
For me, this is just the beginning. Para Tú Altar continues to unfold—I’m still reflecting, researching, and deepening my understanding of spirituality, community, and the powerful stories that surround me. There are so many more layers to explore, questions to ask, and truths to uncover. I don’t see this project as something finite, but rather as a living, evolving body of work that continues to grow with me.
More broadly, I envision my photographic and artistic practice expanding globally—reaching wider audiences while staying rooted in the stories that matter most to me. There are still so many narratives from Latin America that deserve to be seen and heard, and I want to continue creating work that invites people into those worlds with empathy and care.
Empathy is at the core of everything I do. Even though my work is deeply tied to my heritage, I want it to resonate with anyone, anywhere. I hope my images and the world I am creating continue to move people—not just visually, but emotionally and spiritually—and open up space for deeper connection and understanding across cultures.
On a personal and professional level, what does winning the top honor at the ND Awards mean to you?
It means so much to me—more than I can really put into words. On a personal level, it’s incredibly humbling. My work comes from such an intimate place, and every series I create is layered with pieces of myself—my history, my emotions, my culture, my questions. So to have people take the time to look at it, to feel something from it, and to recognize it in this way… it honestly moves me.
Professionally, it’s such an honor to be seen by a platform that uplifts emerging artists and creates space for the kinds of stories I’m passionate about telling. This recognition feels like a reminder that the long nights, the emotional labor, the handmade details—they matter. And that there’s a space in the world for work that comes from the heart and speaks about identity, community, and Latin America in a way that’s real and full of care. I’m just so grateful.
It feels like a blessing, and it motivates me to keep going and keep sharing the stories I believe in.
Project Statement
The Afro-diasporic religions of the Americas, including Santería-Ifá, Candomblé, Umbanda, and Espiritismo, among others, have historically served as sites of cultural resistance and adaptation, blending African spiritual traditions with indigenous and colonial influences. Within these religious frameworks, there is a complex relationship with the natural world, viewing it as sacred and imbued with spiritual significance. This series is inspired by Celia Cruz’s album “Homenaje a Los Santos,” one of her earliest albums that paved the way for ceremonial “Santero” music. The title “Para Tú Altar” references a song in the album about the different types of flowers used to pay tribute to and honor the divine forces of Nature. During that time, there was much silence about the religion due to the widespread prejudice. It could be said that Celia did not truly understand that what she was doing at the time was transcendent for Cuba’s musical culture and the religion itself. Despite their cultural and ecological contributions, Afro-diasporic religions often face resistance and marginalization from dominant cultures.
There exists a continual process of reinterpretation and reconstruction of ancient beliefs and rituals, where symbols and signs perpetually navigate the realms of both individual and collective consciousness. By capturing different entities with my interpretation of ceremonial religious garments, each image offers a portal that enters into communication with the gods channeling the spirits of the ancestors. Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza is an affirmation of the divine power that transcends through the way of the Saints. Through my spiritual beliefs and relationship with the natural world, I am offering an alternative perspective that prioritizes, respects, and honors an interconnectedness with the sacred elements of Nature. In this sense, Afro-diasporic religious practices reveal themselves as agents of socio-cultural change, as they are sensitive to emerging issues, including the protection of the natural environment. This sensitivity arises from their cosmological understanding of the world, which conceives humans as part of an interconnected system in which the natural environment plays a fundamental role. It is about the energy and the cycle of Nature; it is about looking at it as a way of being. Nature gives us life; it gives us everything. That is what gives us the elements to survive and flourish on Earth.
www.vic-toriaruiz.com
@vic.toriaruiz
