Photo of Rivka
Rivka Valérie Louissaint
Lecturer
Email: rivka_louissaint@berkeley.edu
Rivka Valérie Louissaint (she/her) also known as Kakou, is an Haitian cultural worker currently based in Oakland CA. Her practice includes mixed media visual work , writing , dancing as well as being an educator and a community organizer.
Ignited from her experiences and lens as a black, working class, queer, female immigrant, Louissaint create works that seek to unveil the contradictions within our current profit driven society. To do this, she pulls from different places – like working class struggles, popular struggles for national liberation, and struggles to end racial and gender hierarchies – with the goal that through discourse, conscientization and application/action, we can become actors in history and organizers of revolutionary change in our society. Currently, through her paintings and sculptural installations, Louissaint is taking on the challenge of imagining a vision of a possible future that is divorced from, and beyond the horizon of capitalism’s realms of possibility.
Louissaint is inspired by the works and methods of artists such as Emory Douglas, Madjeen Isaac, Alicia Piller and Juniper Harrower. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley, and a 2022-23 Gerardo Marin Diversity Fellow at the University of San Francisco.
Courses Taught:
ART 8
ART 163