Nicole Awai
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1966 (age 59–60)
Nicole Awai | |
|---|---|
 Nicole Awai at Leslie Heller Gallery opening of group show "Said By Her" May 29, 2018 | |
| Born | Nicole Awai 1966 (age 59–60) Port of Spain, Trinidad |
| Education | BA, MFA in Multimedia Art from the University of South Florida |
| Known for | Painting, Drawing, Photography, Installation, Ceramics, Sculpture |
| Awards | The Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2011), Art Matters Grant (2012), Puffin Grant (1998) |
| Website | https://www.nicoleawai.com/ |
Nicole Awai (born 1966) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York and Austin, Texas.[1][2] Her work captures both Caribbean and American landscapes and experiences and engages in cultural critique. She works in many media including painting, photography, drawing, installations, ceramics, and sculpture as well as found objects.[3]
She was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. She is of Afro-Asian ancestry.[4]
Education
She received her Bachelor of Arts in 1991, and a 1996 Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking, both from the University of South Florida. In 1997 she attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.[5][6]
Career
Early in her career in 2000 Holland Cotter remarked in the New York Times that Awai's then figurative paintings were sourced with "unprettified technique and a metaphorical bent" and that West Indies Colonialism was her subject. He speculated that in her overlaid images representing memories of the island of her childhood, the shifting of backgrounds and foregrounds in her paintings was a good way to think about history. He noted that in the 2000 exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem curated by Thelma Golden, Awai shared with other artists such as Sanford Biggers a looser sort of cultural signage as well as a post-1990s identity fluidity.[7]
Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, Senior Curator at El Museum del Barrio, described her layered imagery as identity politics that include both popular culture and her own personal manual of images.[8][9]
In 2018 Awai became involved as an artist in the U.S. monuments dispute. Generated after the Charlottesville, Virginia demonstration of white supremacy that sparked nationwide reconsideration of monuments to the Confederacy still in existence, Awai's proposal for a new monument was one of several done by artists for a New York Times article. Her monument rendering was inspired by the Grand Army Plaza memorial arch which is a tribute to fighters for the Union, focusing on the African-American man who surveys and stands ready for battle.[10]
When the conversation about who should be represented on a public pedestal broadened to deprecation of all indigenous peoples a commission was created to re-evaluate the monuments of New York City. Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art created New Monuments for New Cities and chose Awai's rendered proposal, a street drain in the shape of a man's torso and face that reads “Reclaimed Water.” Carved into the metal at the bottom, a plaque of sorts, reads “Christopher Columbus”.[11]
- Academic Positions
From 2009 to 2015 she held the position of Critic for the Yale School of Art.[12][13] She is currently assistant professor of painting and drawing at the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Art and Art History.[1]
- Artist Residences
- Artists in the Market Place, Bronx Museum of the Arts, (1997-1998)[14]
- Artist-in-Residence, Art Center South Florida, Miami Beach, FL.(1998)[15]
- BRIC Media Arts Fellowship Fellowship, Brooklyn, NY (1999)[16]
- Studio Museum in Harlem (1999-2000),[9]
- Artist-in-Residence, Hunter College, Art Department, New York, NY. (2000)
- Triangle Arts Trust's Big River International Artists' Workshop, Caribbean Contemporary Arts Port-of-Spain, Trinidad (2001)[4]
- Emerge Program, Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ
- Art Omi International Artist's Colony, Hudson / New York, NY (2004)[17]
- Artist-in-Residence, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Queens, NY. (2004)
- John Michael Kohler, Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI (2008)[18]
- Smack Mellon Studio Program, (2010)[19]
- AIR, Alice Yard, Port of Spain Trinidad, (2013)[20]
- Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Process Space Residency Program, (2015)[21]
- BRIC Workspace Residency, Brooklyn, NY (2017)[22]
- Joan Mitchell Center in April (2018)[23]
- Grants
- Payson Fellowship, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine / New York, NY (1997)
- Puffin Foundation Grant, Puffin Foundation LTD, Teaneck, NJ. (1998)
- Painters and Sculptors Grant, the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2011)[24]
- Art Matters Grant, Art Matters Foundation (2012)[25]
- Colene Brown Art Prize (2019)[26]
