BOMB Magazine Award
Vanessa Nieto (born and lives Bogotá, Colombia) has a BFA in Visual Arts from the National University of Colombia, Bogotá and an MFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. She has been exhibited in New York, Rhode Island, Colombia, France and Japan. Nieto’s work is included in public collections including the RISD Museum and Fleet Library, both Providence, RI; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá and Museo del Río Magdalena, Honda, both Colombia. She received a Fulbright Fellowship, and co-founded Taller Circular, a printmaking studio located in Bogotá. Nieto is a Professor in the Fine Arts Department, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Statement from the Artist:
My artistic practice is concerned with the act of leaving a mark, with its corporeal and material implication. I am interested in the female presence in the micropolitics of everyday life, history and work, as well as the encounter with objects and materials that tell us about contact and human experience. I study the social, sensory and metaphorical layers present in debris, mattresses, textiles, damaged furniture, and other everyday objects. The indexical capacities, topographies and temporal notions of use inspires me to reconfigure new states of the body.
Through the analogy of materiality and the body, I have explored dichotomies such as fragility and strength; lightness and heaviness; healing and corrosion; tension and relaxation; the latent and the expressed. My process involves prolonged physical labor that transforms raw or primary materials such as fibers and textiles, or soft and hard materials such as soap. Through this action, I contemplate the performance and how my body itself goes through the experience.