Nicole Awai: Difference between revisions
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{{Infobox artist |
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| name = Nicole Awai |
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| image = Https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholaslaughlin/1223656608/in/photostream/ |
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| birth_name = Nicole Awai |
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| birth_date = 1966 |
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| birth_place = [[Port of Spain]], Trinidad |
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| awards = The Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2011), Art Matters Grant (2012), Puffin Grant (1998) |
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| elected = |
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| website = https://www.nicoleawai.com/ |
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| bgcolour = #6495ED |
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| field = Painting, Drawing, Photography, Installation, Ceramics, Sculpture |
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| training = BA, MFA in Multimedia Art from the University of South Florida |
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| works = |
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| influenced by = Caribbean landscape |
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}} |
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'''Nicole Awai''' born in 1966 is an artist and educator |
'''Nicole Awai''' (born in 1966) is an artist and educator currently living in [[Brooklyn, New York]] and [[Austin, Texas]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Cozier |first=Christopher|date=2003-01-01 |title= Nicole Awai |jstor= 40427033 |journal= BOMB |issue=86 |pages=8–9}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite web |url= http://art.utexas.edu/about/people/nicole-awai |title= Nicole Awai - Department of Art and Art History - The University of Texas at Austin |website= art.utexas.edu |language= en |access-date= 2017-03-11}}</ref> Her work spans many media and often focuses on multiple perspectives of living in the contemporary Americas.<ref name=":14">{{Cite web |last=Hall |first= Sarah Elise |date= 2014-12-13 |title= Artist Interview: Nicole Awai |url= https://www.vilcek.org/news/media-coverage/artist-interview-nicole-awai.html |website= Vilcek Foundation}}</ref> |
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== Early Life == |
== Early Life == |
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[[File:Nicole_Awai_in_her_studio_at_CCA7,_Port_of_Spain,_Trinidad,_23_August,_2007.jpg|thumb|Nicole Awai in her studio at CCA7, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 23 August, 2007]] |
[[File:Nicole_Awai_in_her_studio_at_CCA7,_Port_of_Spain,_Trinidad,_23_August,_2007.jpg|thumb|Nicole Awai in her studio at CCA7, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 23 August, 2007]]She was born in [[Port of Spain|Port-of-Spain]], [[Trinidad|Trini]]<nowiki/>dad. She is of Afro-Chinese ancestry.<ref name=":0" /> |
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== Education == |
== Education == |
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== Profile == |
== Profile == |
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Formerly a Critic for the [[Yale School of Art]],<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.aptglobal.org/en/Artists/Page/9611/Nicole-Awai|title=Nicole Awai|website=Artist Pension Trust|access-date=2017-03-04}}</ref> Awai currently is an Assistant Professor in painting and drawing in the [[University of Texas at Austin]]'s Department of Art and [[Art history|Art History]].<ref name=":5" /> |
Formerly a Critic for the [[Yale School of Art]],<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.aptglobal.org/en/Artists/Page/9611/Nicole-Awai|title=Nicole Awai|website=Artist Pension Trust|access-date=2017-03-04}}</ref> Awai currently is an Assistant Professor in painting and drawing in the [[University of Texas at Austin]]'s Department of Art and [[Art history|Art History]].<ref name=":5" /> <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://artmultiple.biz/collections/nicole-awai|title=Nicole Awai|website=ArtMultiple.biz|access-date=2017-09-21}}</ref> |
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Awai's work captures both [[Caribbean]] and American [[landscapes]] and experiences.<ref name=":0" /> She uses many types of media in her work, including [[painting]], [[photography]], [[drawing]], [[Installation art|installations]], ceramics, and [[sculpture]] as well as found objects. Many of her works require close attention, participation, or interactivity from the viewer.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Aranda-Alvarado|first=Rocio|year=2001|title=Culture and Memory|url=http://nka.dukejournals.org/content/2001/13-14/123|journal=NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art|volume=13-14|pages=123|via=Duke University Press}}</ref> Awai explores [[human migration]], [[art history]]<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|url=http://www.vilcek.org/news/press-release/nicole-awai-almost-undone.html|title=An Artist Finds her Footing on Liminal Terrain - Nicole Awai unveils mixed-media installation at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery (Press Release)|last=Schruth|first=Anne|date=07/11/2011|website=Vilcek Foundation|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=03/04/2017}}</ref> cultural, social, and historical identity and their implications, while weaving in common objects and [[Popular culture|pop-culture]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Aranda-Alvarado|first=Rocío|title=The world of in-between: An interview with Nicole Awai|journal=Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas|volume=37|issue=1|pages=65–72|doi=10.1080/0890576042000239582|year=2004}}</ref> |
Awai's work captures both [[Caribbean]] and American [[landscapes]] and experiences.<ref name=":0" /> She uses many types of media in her work, including [[painting]], [[photography]], [[drawing]], [[Installation art|installations]], ceramics, and [[sculpture]] as well as found objects. Many of her works require close attention, participation, or interactivity from the viewer.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Aranda-Alvarado|first=Rocio|year=2001|title=Culture and Memory|url=http://nka.dukejournals.org/content/2001/13-14/123|journal=NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art|volume=13-14|pages=123|via=Duke University Press}}</ref> Awai explores [[human migration]], [[art history]]<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|url=http://www.vilcek.org/news/press-release/nicole-awai-almost-undone.html|title=An Artist Finds her Footing on Liminal Terrain - Nicole Awai unveils mixed-media installation at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery (Press Release)|last=Schruth|first=Anne|date=07/11/2011|website=Vilcek Foundation|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=03/04/2017}}</ref> cultural, social, and historical identity and their implications, while weaving in common objects and [[Popular culture|pop-culture]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Aranda-Alvarado|first=Rocío|title=The world of in-between: An interview with Nicole Awai|journal=Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas|volume=37|issue=1|pages=65–72|doi=10.1080/0890576042000239582|year=2004}}</ref> |
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Revision as of 09:48, 2 April 2018
Nicole Awai (born in 1966) is an artist and educator currently living in Brooklyn, New York and Austin, Texas.[1][2] Her work spans many media and often focuses on multiple perspectives of living in the contemporary Americas.[3]
Early Life
She was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. She is of Afro-Chinese ancestry.[1]
Education
1991 Bachelor of Arts (BA) University of South Florida,
1996 Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Multi-media Art (specializing in painting and printmaking[4]) University of South Florida,[5]
1997 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine [6][7]
Profile
Formerly a Critic for the Yale School of Art,[8] Awai currently is an Assistant Professor in painting and drawing in the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Art and Art History.[2] [9]
Awai's work captures both Caribbean and American landscapes and experiences.[1] She uses many types of media in her work, including painting, photography, drawing, installations, ceramics, and sculpture as well as found objects. Many of her works require close attention, participation, or interactivity from the viewer.[10] Awai explores human migration, art history[11] cultural, social, and historical identity and their implications, while weaving in common objects and pop-culture.[12]
"The artist herself refers to the focus of her work as bearing an essential 'multiplicity on many levels.' In particular, she seems intent on having the viewer's own experience with identity politics play a major role in interpretation. Multiple associations are immediately possible, given her layering of images from both popular culture and her own manual of iconography."[10]
The viewer of Awai's work should not instantly understand an inherent 'meaning', but should need to explore and apply their own experiences and understandings to the work.[13]
Selected Works
1997 Notes for Material Repose sculpture was created in 1997, and displayed in June 2016.[14] The sculpture intended to make viewers aware of "all interaction as a transformative experience, social and material that creates a more acute awareness of HERE – our present/ presence.[14] Awai puts heavy emphasis on the significance of the sculpture's materials, stating:
"There are inescapable narratives embedded in all materiality. Posited historically, culturally and genetically, continually back and forth, the inextricable union of narrative and matter. Notes on Material Re-Pose is a sketch, an exploration of this union through varying material states of being in immediate time and perpetual history. There is interplay in this examination between pose (materiality noticed, brought to our attention) and repose (being in a state of rest, preparation for the next material transformation)."[14].
The sculpture was displayed at Critical Practices Inc. and 21st Projects; Awai chose these exhibits for their "informal viewings" of artists' works, intending to "move away from the white cube as the normative space for cultural consumption and bring art, artist, and audience into a domestic setting."[14]
2001 Panyard, is a depiction of the festival of Carnival and Awai engages with the formal aspects of Minimalism with the creation of this series. The hyper-masculine and first world celebration is reconfigured by the artist to re-appropriate the connotation of the celebration along with the minimalist movement. It is replete with heavily masculinized fantastical floats, costumes, and cosmetic aesthetics and Awai strives to revert the masculine gaze with her art to add texture to the Caribbean tradition. She incorporates Trinidadian culture along with her unique identity to create this series.[15]
2003 - 2007 Local Ephemera as a project began as drawn plans for a sculpture exhibited in 2003, but later became a unique, stand-alone series. The illustrations included in Local Ephemera "depict various artifacts, both contemporary and historical, to reveal a world constantly in flux - the world of in between and inside out. It's a dynamic plane of shifting perception, but one framed within a technical drawing format, thus lending its structure while weaving themes often found in Ms. Awai's other work - of duality, location, and cultural reprocessing."[11] The artist describes this work as "a parallel world" where one can inspect "in-between spaces, the slippage, around and beyond the boundaries.[6]"
Mixed media "specimens" are also associated with this project and include various materials such as paint, nail polish, glitter, etc.[16] Notable works from Local Ephemera include Specimen from Local Ephemera: Tension Springs (2004), Specimen from Local Ephemera: Drab Hanger (2007), Specimen from Local Ephemera: Castle Nut and Drama Queen (2007), and Specimen from Local Ephemera: Resistance with Black Ooze (2005).[17]
2011 Almost Undone is a sculpture that was displayed on 16 September, 2011 at The Vilcek Foundation Gallery, in conjunction with her earlier works of her Local Ephemera series.[18] The sculpture incorporates a wide variety of materials, which are as "varied as cast and sprayed paper, resin, plastic, nail polish, and clay, resulting in bold, complex three-dimensional structures, which seem to pull, stretch, and tear from the wall—and from the memory of their two-dimensional predecessors."[18]The sculpture puts emphasis on its multi-dimensional adaptation from the Local Ephemera series; The Vilcek Foundation described the progression from Local Ephemera to Almost Undone, stating: "From [Local Ephemera], they emerge (some might say escape), reconstitute, and ultimately transition from one dimension into the next."[19] The sculpture's public displaying period started on 17 September, 2011 and ended on 29 October, 2011.[20]
2012 Vistas consists of a series Awai had been working on since the mid 2000s.[21] In this series, she partially focused on the characteristics of the black oozing seen in her work.[21] Awai was awarded the Art Matters Grant in 2012 so that she could travel to La Brea Pitch Lake in Trinidad.[21] La Brea Pitch Lake is the largest deposit of natural asphalt in the world, and Awai was exploring what influence this site may have had on the black oozing in her work.[21] Awai says she has “come to understand that this black oozing materiality is in actuality a site of confluence - of our histories, our physical existence and the elasticity of time, space and place in the Americas.”[21] When talking about the series, Awai explains her conception of the idea of vistas: “Vistas are momentary glimpse experiences. There is a feeling of impermanence, of possible shift, change or impending disappearance, illusive physicality that may actually be imagined and ephemeral. Vistas could be windows to the past, the future or even moments in the present that cannot be specified.”[21]
2013 Asphaltum Glance, was a painting on the walls of the small gallery at Alice Yard in her native Trinidad. Awai explored the origins of the viscosity and blackness that were a long-standing staples of her painting ouevre. When a trip to Le Brea resonated with a childhood memory of a nearby pitch lake, she photographed close-up details of it as the basis for wall sized paintings for the gallery. Speaking about the connection between the black ooze and Caribbean identity, Awai says, "The pitch lake is constantly replenishing itself, just like us, taking on new form."[22] According to Awai, asphalt is, "literally the remnants of all of us, the decomposition of all flora and all fauna over the course of known time that keeps turning, churning and revealing at the same instance material and items randomly from yesterday and four hundred years ago."[23] Before leaving Trinidad, Awai painted over Asphaltum Glance as a way of continuing her themes of "regeneration and malleability."[22]
Other Notable Series/Works[16]
- Local Ephemera/Specimen from Local Ephemera (2002–2007)
- Rolling Locking Devices (2004- )
- Bikini Beach (2006)
- Red Room Limbo (2000–2002)
- Culturally Unspecific (2006- )
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions[8]
| Title | Year | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Vistas | 2017 | Lesley Heller Gallery, New York, NY |
| Material Re-Pose | 2017 | Courtyard Gallery, The University of Texas at Austin |
| Notes for Material Re-Pose | 2016 | Critical Practices/ 21st Projects, New York, NY |
| Asphaltum Glance | 2013 | Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad |
| Mi Papi, Dream On - Happy Ending | 2012 | 80wse Galleries, New York University |
| Almost Undone | 2011 | The Vilcek Foundation, New York, NY |
| Backwards and Forwards | 2008 | Akus Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT |
| Local Ephemera | 2005 | Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Queens, NY |
| Panyard (with Terry Boddie) | 2001 | Five Myles, Brooklyn, NY |
References
- ^ a b c Cozier, Christopher (2003-01-01). "Nicole Awai". BOMB (86): 8–9. JSTOR 40427033.
- ^ a b "Nicole Awai - Department of Art and Art History - The University of Texas at Austin". art.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ^ Hall, Sarah Elise (2014-12-13). "Artist Interview: Nicole Awai". Vilcek Foundation.
- ^ Awai, Nicole (2014). "Artist Statement". Http://muse.jhu.edu/article/556976. v.37:no.4: 943–946 – via Project Muse.
{{cite journal}}: External link in|journal= - ^ "Yale University School of Art: Nicole Awai". art.yale.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
- ^ a b "The Drawing Center - Viewing Program - Nicole Awai". www.drawingcenter.org. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
- ^ "Nicole Awai". The Agora Culture. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
- ^ a b "Nicole Awai". Artist Pension Trust. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
- ^ "Nicole Awai". ArtMultiple.biz. Retrieved 2017-09-21.
- ^ a b Aranda-Alvarado, Rocio (2001). "Culture and Memory". NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art. 13–14: 123 – via Duke University Press.
- ^ a b Schruth, Anne (07/11/2011). "An Artist Finds her Footing on Liminal Terrain - Nicole Awai unveils mixed-media installation at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery (Press Release)". Vilcek Foundation. Retrieved 03/04/2017.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=and|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - ^ Aranda-Alvarado, Rocío (2004). "The world of in-between: An interview with Nicole Awai". Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. 37 (1): 65–72. doi:10.1080/0890576042000239582.
- ^ Clement, Douglas P. (2016-04-01). "The Female Identity, Discussed in Art". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
- ^ a b c d Awai, Nicole. "Notes for Material Repose". Nicole Awai. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
- ^ Aranda-Alvarado, Rocío (2004-11-17). "Resonance: The Essence of the Playing Field". Small Axe. 8 (2): 32. doi:10.1353/smx.2004.0016. ISSN 1534-6714.
- ^ a b Awai, Nicole (2007). [muse.jhu.edu/article/224200 "Email from "HERE""]. Small Axe. v.11:no.3: 109–117 – via Project Muse.
{{cite journal}}: Check|url=value (help) - ^ "Artist Portfolio". The Drawing Center. The Drawing Center. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
- ^ a b Bynoe, Holly. "Nicole Awai presents Almost Undone at Vilcek Foundation Gallery". A.R.C. Magazine. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
- ^ Nichole Awai: Almost Undone. New York, NY: Vilcek Foundation. 2011. p. 4.
- ^ "Nicole Awai: Almost Undone". The Vilcek Foundation. 2011. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - ^ a b c d e f "Nicole Awai: Vistas". www.lesleyheller.com. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
- ^ a b ARC. "The Origins of Nicole Awai's Ooze". arcthemagazine.com. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
- ^ "Artist Interview: Nicole Awai | Art-Rated". art-rated.com. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
