Nicole Awai, born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, is renowned for her innovative multi-media works that often incorporate unconventional materials such as melted vinyl, nail polish, nylon mesh, found doll parts, and synthetic paper. Her art serves as a dynamic site for exploring historical confluences, examining the fluidity of time, space, and place within the context of the Americas.
Awai's artistic journey includes significant milestones such as attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency in 1997 and serving as an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2000. She gained further recognition when she was featured in the 2005 Initial Public Offerings series at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Over the years, she has received several prestigious awards, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2011 and an Art Matters Grant in 2012.
In addition to her artistic practice, Awai has had a significant impact on arts education. From 2009 to 2015, she served as a Critic in the Department of Painting and Printmaking at the Yale School of Art. She has also held teaching and educational positions at various esteemed institutions, including Parsons School of Design, Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Currently, she is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Awai's work has been featured in numerous influential exhibitions, such as Greater New York: New Art in New York Now at P.S.1/MoMA (2000), the Biennale of Ceramic in Contemporary Art (2003), and Open House: Working in Brooklyn (2004) at the Brooklyn Museum. She also participated in Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (2007) and the 2008 Busan Biennale in Korea. Her art has been showcased at various prestigious venues, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Bronx Museum, the Queens Museum, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Biennale of the Caribbean in Aruba (2013).
Recent exhibitions of her work include SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at ArtsWestchester, Splotch at Sperone Westwater, Envisioning the Liquid Land at Lesley Heller Gallery in New York, and The High Line Network exhibition New Monuments for New Cities