Meet the artist!

Arianna DeRenzi, also known as Nani, is a Nuyorican painter whose work explores the intersections of cultural identity, personal memory, and diasporic experience. Rooted in her upbringing between the housing projects of Staten Island and the rich heritage of Puerto Rico, DeRenzi’s practice is both intimate and political. She draws from family traditions as a guiding motif in her work. Her paintings become visual conversations between past and present, using iconography and urban relics to evoke complex narratives of survival, pride, and longing.

DeRenzi works primarily with raw, unstretched canvas, allowing the material’s absorbency and unpredictability to mirror the blurred, sometimes fragmented nature of memory. Inspired by surrealist techniques and dream logic, she distorts space, manipulates symbolism, and often merges painting with poetic text. Themes of loss, femininity, ecological mourning, and inherited trauma recur throughout her work, often through recurring imagery like melting candles, crumpled letters, and altars. Her compositions balance expressive brushwork with layered storytelling, using vibrant color and texture to conjure both emotional intensity and quiet introspection.

Her influences range from Frida Kahlo’s symbolic portraiture and Martin Wong’s textured cityscapes to contemporary voices like Gina Beavers, Criselda Vásquez, and Brandi Twilley. Across all her work, DeRenzi is guided by a desire to create spaces that feel sacred and honest—places where the personal becomes communal, and where overlooked histories, especially those of Latinx women, are not only preserved but celebrated.

Through painting, writing, and installation, DeRenzi builds a visual language that honors the resilience of her community while challenging viewers to reflect on their own relationship to place, legacy, and belonging.