Biography

Nicki Cherry (they/she) is a visual artist based in Queens, New York. They received their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019 and their BA from The University of Chicago in 2014. Cherry has exhibited their work nationally, including at the The Border Project Space, ELM Foundation, and Shin Gallery in New York; Automat in Philadelphia; and the Reva David Logan Center for the Arts, and Slate Arts and Performance in Chicago. They have a residency at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY in summer 2022 and will present a solo exhibition at NARS in 2023.

Artist Statement

My sculptures are active sites of growth and decay—tulips bloom from stretching tendrils, ceramic bodies leak milky fluids, spine-shaped candles burn and diffuse scent. I coat amorphously carved figurative forms with pigmented concrete, fiberglass, wax, and resin. Some of these bodies are fragmented into multiple parts and spread across space; others are missing limbs and heads entirely.

I punctuate these alien forms with live and fake flowers, medical ephemera, rubber tubing, and fountain pumps that circulate liquids through the sculptures. Combining shape-shifting forms with these objects, my sculptures reenact the fluctuations we experience within our physical and physiological selves.