Nicole Awai

...So Bloody Civilized, 1999.
Acrylic on canvas
Courtesy the artist

  

Nicole Awai was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1966. She arrived in New York in 1997. Teaching Gallery in Tampa, FL presented a solo exhibition of her work in 1996. She has participated in group shows at the Bronx Arts Council Longwood Gallery, NY (2000), the Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque, NM (1999), the Rotunda Gallery, NY (1999), the St. Petersburg Center for the Arts, FL (1998), and at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY (1998). She was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1999-2000.

You may contact the artist at
awai_greaterny@hotmail.com
 

"Multiplicity is the essence of identity in the Americas. Being the many at once. Multiplicity is revealed or concealed via cultural specificity which in turn is mediated by an individual's perspective (class, race, gender, traditions, etc.).

Is the little girl in the painting being threatened?

Is she witnessing a masquerade tradition in which one plays oneself to the fullest?

Is the little girl being affected, effected and infected by colonization in reverse? (a phrase coined by the poet Louise Bennett to aptly describe the cultural significance of the movement of the West Indian Diaspora to Europe and North America)"

 

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