2023
72″x108″
Acrylic on canvas

2024
26″x16″
Felted wool roving

The artwork of Mila Rio inhabits a realm of its own. Her pieces are crafted to evoke visceral sensations, enveloping viewers and communicating beyond the boundaries of verbal expression. If her work could speak, it may also say that Mila grew up in the Okanagan, and currently resides in Victoria, BC, on the unceded territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. Her artwork is also influenced by her time spent living in Norway, Colombia, and the USA. These experiences invoked her with a curiosity on the nuances of the emotional psyche, and initiated her into the shock and awe of the isolation of human existence. She is influenced by the paradox of isolation resonating as a unifying thread within the collective to further explore what evades understanding within herself.

Mila works with acrylic and oil paintings, fiber art, and sculpture, utilizing the different creation techniques from a multimedia arsenal to reflect the various planes of tangibility within her own (and everyone’s) existence. The layers of drips and colours that compose her work serve as a portal to draw the viewer inwards, into the emotional realm that offers no firm footing, across the yearning and softness found between hard edges, and through the slippage that takes place in between planes.

Through the act of creation, Mila finds allowance to confront all that comes with what it means to exist in a body. In this process she forges her pathways through the sorrow, yearning, uncomfortability, and peace that push and bridge the gaps between the exteriority and interiority of being.