Nikki Brooks

Animation / Video / Film, Drawing, Multidisciplinary, Multidisciplinary Art, Painting, Public Art, Sculpture / Installation, Visual / Media

Nikki’s artwork focuses on social activism and art. She creates artworks that provoke the audience to interact with the objects, images, sculptures, and writings presented in the space. Artists like Fred Wilson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Maya Lin, and Adrian Piper have inspired and influenced the way Nikki curates her space to become this communal space for all viewers. She describes her created spaces: as “walking into one of my collages.”

About the Artist

Nikki Brooks was born in 1975 in Brooklyn, New York, but was raised in Spotsylvania County, VA. She is a multi-disciplinary artist that works specifically in installations and assemblage that are infused with digital and audio elements, paintings, sculpted text, and collage spaces. These works encourage the viewer to connect in forms of writing, storytelling, and shared dialogue through workshops that focus on diversity, inclusion, truth- telling and lament.

Nikki Brooks website View Website

Artist's Statement

Nikki describes her installations as a “collage in 3-D, a multitude of voices.” The words and teachings of the strong women in her life are the guiding light to these artworks. Juxtaposed with those teachings are artworks that are ignited from social unrest among her community and the world. The work is beyond beautiful, and Nikki layers the work so that the audience cannot just admire the ‘beauty’ aesthetic. Each painting, each digital piece, or object is a pandora's box of truth telling, and oftentimes a lived experience. Therefore, the viewer must interact within the space to get to the core meaning. Some artworks are 2-D, and other artworks are 3-D, and incorporate food. These combinations of artworks use the notion of comfort and utility as a way of inviting the viewer to interact with its functionality. Nikki continues to create works to push tough conversations as a way of getting people to participate in these issues, not just admire them as if they are pictures. She consistently undertakes the work to imbue these narratives into the consciousness of people who generally do not have to participate or understand because they have a privilege not granted to Blackness.

Featured Work

Photos

Guardians of Legacy, Honor, and Community 2022 16.3ft.x 30 ft, (2022) Severn, MD
I was selected to be the muralist for the new Intergenerational Center in Severn, Maryland. This mural was a collaborative project between the community of Severn and Arundel County. It was created to honor the guardians of the Severn Community.

Pride of Annapolis Towne Center, 2023, 117ft x 189ft. Annapolis, MD

I was commissioned by Annapolis Towne Center to paint a mural celebrating PRIDE month. This mural represents family, equality, and love of the LGBTQIA+ Community and to also honor legendary members of the community with two quotes from Bayard Rustin and Barbara Gittings

Videos

Mourning Discourse

See more information about Mourning Discourse

Mourning Discourse

Defines the everyday blackness in America since the enslaved landed upon these shores. Although the media has been drawing attention to the senseless murders of unarmed black men and boys somewhere in this narrative the dehumanizing and patriarchal acts enforced upon black women can become seated in the back of our minds as a moment.
Breonna's murderers still haven't been held accountable. The murders of countless other black women killed by no knock warrants, or police shootings unresolved.
Neither have the countless rapes and stereotypical pressures placed upon our bodies forced us to create an added layer to our (black women) skin giving us no permission to be anything less than strong.
In this mourning it is my hope that through performative discourse layers of historical suppression are peeled back and the audience analyzes the silent gaze that watches the black female body negotiate such structural violence.

Mourning Discourse is a collaboration of performance, sound, and installation art. The performance/dance is choreographed by Kay Harris (a former Alvin Ailey dancer) and her daughter Nya Harris (Kennedy Center dancer). Both sound and installation are created by artist Nikki Brooks.

Medium: video

Year: 2021

Booking

Booking Price: $2,001-$5,000

Chanel Compton - Executive Director Banneker-Douglass Museum: chanel.compton@maryland.gov
Catherine Brady- Director of Marketing ; CBrady@trademarkproperty.com
Erin Karperwicz- Chief Executive Officer; EKarpewicz@acdsinc.org