From Misdirection to Redirection: Nicole Awai’s “In the thick of it”

by Ruhee Maknojia October 15, 2024

In The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art Beyond Solidarity (2023), Joan Kee delves into the nuanced relationships between African and Asian artists, moving beyond simplistic notions of racial solidarity. Kee highlights historical connections between these continents, particularly pivotal moments like the 1955 Bandung Conference, which advanced principles of self-determination, coexistence, and sovereignty. She examines how these ideas surface in the work of artists like Senga Nengudi and Obiora Udechukwu, who navigate political and cultural autonomy through their art. Kee’s work suggests a form of fluidity in art, one in which an artist’s legacy is not solely determined by their racial or geographical identity. 

Similar to some of the themes expressed in Kee’s book, Nicole Awai’s exhibition at Christian-Green Gallery, presents opportunities for audiences to engage with her practice in ways that transcend familiar themes of race and identity. While those elements remain a part of the conversation, Awai’s work expands into broader investigations of interconnectedness and existence. Reminiscent of the Bandung Conference leaders, who resisted the Cold War’s binary tensions, Awai’s art defies categorization, creating a space for expansive, nuanced interpretations that resist narrow or predetermined frameworks.

A gallery with several large scale framed collages on the wall and an abstract sculpture on the floor.

“Nicole Awai: In the thick of it,” installation view. Photo: Mark Doroba

In the thick of It, an exhibition curated by Philip Townsend presents a selection of Awai’s work from the past 20 years, offering glimpses into an artistic practice that delves deeper than surface-level discussions. Her range of wall and floor sculptures, along with her expansive paintings, sit prominently in the gallery space. 

Distinguishing features of the exhibition are her large and medium-sized drawings, which highlight the artist’s technical skills. In many of the drawings, along the paper’s edges, is the presence of a color bar, composed of nail polish and the title of the polish color. Much like Pantone swatches in design or white balance cards in photography, these color bars act as a reference system, ensuring color consistency and balance throughout her compositions. Positioned at the margins, they guide the evolving forms and actions in her work, anchoring it in a process of continual exploration.

A framed work consisting of collaged and hand-drawn elements of two women connected at the hips, with a small bar of color on one side and a colored pattern on the other side.

Nicole Awai, “Specimen from Local Ephemera: Drab Hanger,” 2008, graphite, acrylic paint, nail polish and glitter on paper, 50 × 38 inches. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mark Doroba

The playful names of nail polish colors, such as Gogo Green and Pinpoint Black, further underscore how large capitalist social structures appeal to variegated American communities by codifying phrases and words through seemingly everyday tools of personal expression. By describing her color bars as a “codified language,” Awai captures the layered ways in which gender, desire, and the deeper symbolism of color come together in her work and the larger cultural and social sphere of the United States.

A flat, abstract, floor sculpture consisting of multiple fragmented components.

Nicole Awai, “I Vant to be An Alone Star,” 2011 nail polish, polyurethane resin, nylon netting, metal flashing, construction foam and wood, 95 × 100 × 17 inches. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mark Doroba

Beyond the color bars, the theme of ooze plays a central role in Awai’s practice, offering an exploration of the fluid. In works such as I Vant to be An Alone Star, presented as a floor painting, the black ooze is the most visible artwork in the exhibition. The recurring theme and presence of a thick, uncontainable substance speaks to the idea of permeable boundaries between time, culture, materiality, and collective existence. In her work, ooze becomes more than just a visual idea; it symbolizes the interconnectedness of all things. Humans, she suggests, are not separate from the world around them but part of an ever-shifting, interconnected whole.

Awai’s use of ooze reflects this fundamental unity. It challenges the notion of fixed identities, presenting viewers instead with a position of fluidity, where boundaries between self, matter, and the world are constantly dissolving and reforming in a continuous state of misdirections and redirections.

 

In the thick of it is on view at the Christian-Green Gallery, Art Galleries at Black Studies, at the University of Texas at Austin, through December 7, 2024.

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