About Bella Riza

I am an artist, filmmaker and teacher. I studied literature, performing arts, dance and moving-image. I’m drawn to the role of time across these mediums. When I graduated I worked in theatres, creating projections for live performances. In the dark, I liked to follow the movement of shadows and light and consider its ability to continually move and shape experience. I began working on projects that involved archives, and through the process of searching for, tracing and arranging this material history, I found myself connected to the past, present and future. Orienting myself inside of time is what brought me to making images, film and more recently sound and performance. Across all forms, my work explores landscape, memory and renewal, in relation to experiences of belonging.

My work has been presented at John Hansard Gallery, B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Nicoletti Contemporary, LOOP Barcelona, PlatformAsia and videoclub, Tate St Ives, Liverpool Biennial and South London Gallery. Together with Inês Neto dos Santos I received the LOOP Video Production Award, and I have been selected for New Contemporaries, Visions in the Nunnery and the Aesthetica Art Prize. For the past 6 years I have worked as a lecturer in creative non-fiction film at UCL, where I also serve as a mentor to students. I hold a masters of the arts from the Royal College of Art. I am based between London and Cyprus.